Ice Wine (aka: Eiswein, Icewein, Icewine, Eiswine)
Frozen Vines at Gsellmann & GsellmannWhat’s with all the spellings?
Ice wine has German roots, which is why you will commonly see the German spellings for ice, “Eis” and Wine, “Wein” combined as Eiswein. You will also come across a host of incorrect mixes of the two languages creating spellings such as Eiswine and icewein. You may also find it called Vin de Glacier and Ledove Vino. But all of them refer to one thing: Wine, made from grapes which have frozen on the vine.
One would expect ice wine to have a long history in winemaking, but it does not. In fact, ice wine has only been around for about 200 years. In his book
Ever since, ice wine has been produced to some degree in all wine producing countries of the Northern hemisphere, including Austria, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and others. It has been barely more than a decade, though, that ice wine has become a coveted jewel amongst wine lovers, as for many years its atypical production method gave it the presumption of being a “gimmicky” wine.
Early Morning at Weiss VineyardsThe difference between ice wine and other sweet wines, such as TBA (Trockenbeerenauslese), Sauternes, Beerenauslese or Schilfwein, is that ice wines show a much clearer fruit and varietal character. This is due to its production method: while other sweet wines are made from botrytis (”noble rot”) affected grapes or grapes dried for weeks on mats of straw, ice wine grapes are usually healthy at the time of harvest. This causes the grapes to retain a good amount of acidity, which gives an ice wine a certain kind of raciness when compared to its dessert wine cousins.
True ice wine is that made from grapes which are kept on the vine until the temperature sinks below 19, 4 Fahrenheit or -7 degree Celsius.
Some producers in regions that allow to do so (namely the US and New Zealand) have started producing simulated ice wine by tossing the grapes into a commercial freezer.
ice wine Harvest - Weiss WineryDoes nature impart nuances and layers of taste to the grapes while they remain on the vine, sometimes past Christmas and into the new year, that a commercial freezer can not provide? Most wine lovers don’t consider this to be a serious question. Simulated ice wines are therefore considered to be of lower value and will typically sell at half the price of ice wine made the traditional way.
Both methods do employ the same basic trick though: a grape is made up mostly of water, and since only the water will freeze at those low temperatures, the sweet grape juice can be pressed from the grapes while the water remains trapped in the skins of the grapes in the form of pressed ice.
This is also the reason for it’s high price: when you consider that the better part of each grape is deliberately lost, leaving behind only a small percentage of the harvest, which in itself is no easy pickings as it must be done at night so that the sun will not melt the ice, leaving the workers to, as it were, freeze their clusters off (and their fingers)….well, that’s a lot of work for a small amount of sweet nectar.
It is also essential to harvest at the very first frost night of the year, because grapes left on the vine to go through a freeze-thaw-refreeze cycle can pick up unwanted flavors. Winemakers are therefore often nervous wrecks by the time the harvest is over as they will have spent night after night waking up many times to check the temperature. The wineries of Burgenland in Austria have a well working network of winemakers who will check on the temperature in the different vineyards and call each other when harvest can commence.
Ice Wine Fashion“Keeping the harvest workers ready can be a tedious and embarrassing task” says Franz Heiss. He will often have to call a dozen harvest workers for the fifth or sixth time, only to see another night pass without the desired temperatures being reached.
On top of this dance around the thermometer, an ice wine harvest is at times not even successful. Franz Heiss tells a story of when he started harvest at midnight at a comfortable minus eight degrees Celsius. Nobody thought much of a bank of fog moving in during picking, but they soon found out that this fog had lifted the temperature, resulting in slightly thawed grapes by the time they reached the cellar. Because the water in the grapes will now dilute the wine down, the legal requirements for an ice wine weren’t met any longer. Instead of an ice wine, this one became an Auslese wine, very much to Franz Heiss’s dismay.
The fact that the winemakers have to literally wait for the frost, and often it will never come and all the grapes and work are lost, means that the grapes stay on the vine and go through a full circle of ripening all the way to a state of being shriveled down to brown raisin-like grapes by late Dezember.
Franz HeissExtra time on the vine means extra work for the winemaker. The grapes need to be defended against the “free harvest workers”: the starling birds, small deer and snacking boars.
In Austria the first frost hits right around Christmas and quite a few winemakers can tell stories of Santa arriving a day late as the ice wine harvest had to first be brought into the winery and pressed immediately.
A good ice wine is clear and vibrant in its flavors and aromas. Amongst many other contenders, the aromatic Scheurebe grape has properties that make it a popular choice for use in ice wine . The stunning 2002 Eiswein by Gsellmann and Gsellmann exemplifies this perfectly.
Traminer, with its characteristic aromas of rosewood, is another aromatic varietal that make it a good choice. Master sweet wine vintner Franz Heiss makes a fascinating ice wine from this grape and we were lucky to pick up some cases of the 2001 and the 2002 vintage. He has also made ice wine with the red grape, Blaufrankisch, and the result is a magic rose-colored version with notes of exotic berries and dusty violets. As he explains it: “An ice wine made from red grapes is very uncommon. The freezing of the grapes influences the aromas greatly, and this is especially true when the grapes are red.”
Manfred WeissThe most Austrian ice wine, one could argue, is an ice wine from Austria’s flagship grape, the Grüner Veltliner. Manfred Weiss made a Grüner-only ice wine in 1999 and a cuvee of Gruner and Welschriesling in 2001. He in fact prefers to use Grüner Veltliner in his ice wine because they are more resistant to botrytis, so the end result has notes as clear as, say, an icicle.
No need to mention that these ice wines are the real thing. In Austria, where wine laws are strictest in all of Europe, only ice wines created by Mother Nature are allowed to carry the proud name, and the winemakers wouldn’t want it any other way.
Where can I purchase Icewein?
Dear Rebecca,
You can purchase Icewine right here at our store.
When you click a product name that is red and underlined, it will take you to a product detail page on this wine that has an “add to cart” button.
Thanks for your comment. It made us aware how we can improve our site.
We will from now on add a link at the bottom of an article, just like this one here:
Click here to browse our Icewines
Stephan,
Thanks for the really informative article on Ice Wine. It’s tough to find really good concise info on this more esoteric of wine styles - I know from experience trying to prepare tastings of my own.
Look forward to reading more of your wine reports.
Courtney
Can you please tell me, are the frozen grapes literally “pressed” - or are they pulverized?
thank you
The grapes are literally pressed. The ice will be crushed to what looks like snow that stays in the broken grape skins, while the grape juice flows out and is collected in a baisin below the press.
Today most wineries use a pneumatic wine press featuring a central elastic membrane that presses the grapes gently which improves the quality of the wine.
I would like to purchase dessert wine as presents for my doctor colleagues this Christmas. Could you recommend some (that wouldn’t break the bank)?
Although, after reading the article above I’m only thinking about which ice wine to buy for me…
Hi Rebecca,
I would recommend the Heiss Acacia-Barrique Sauvignon Blanc Beerenauslese 2001 for $19.99 if you want to give a great dessert wine that has a little bit of an edge (meaning acidity) to it. We have just recently tasted a large group of people on our dessert wines and this one was a favorite of many.
If you want to go a little bit higher in price and sugar concentration I would recommend the Feiler Artinger Ruster Ausbruch Pinot Cuveé 1998 at $47.99. This wine has earned a lot of praise from critics for good reasons. I find it to be sensational.
Best wishes,
Stephan
I see that here is a “red” icewine:
http://www.winemonger.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=434
How is that possible? How could they seperate the ice from the skins so that the pressed grape juice can sit with the skins, but not be diluted by the ice/water?
Thansk for any info!
Do you know if there are any makers in California? I’d love to buy local.
Hi Rebecca,
While there are some wineries in California making “icewine” dessert wines which they call “vin de glacier”, these are not true Ice Wines as the grapes have been thrown into a freezer, and did not freeze naturally on the vine. Some of these wines can be quite tasty, but they are not Icewines. A quick web search will give you a few producers of these wines.
Cheers,
Emily
Hi Matt,
Ice wine needs to be pressed right away to avoid any thawing, which would add water to the juice and thus ruin its chances at getting the ice wine certification (the Austrian Ice Wine police will come and check the juice after pressing…).
The crushed ice and grapes are separated from the juice and the color of red ice wine is therefore a very pale red or pink.
I relayed your question to Franz Heiss and he further explained that “the pigments are frozen in the skins and can therefore not be released into the juice or only to a very small extent.”
Cheers,
Stephan
I just received my Weiss eiswein in the mail. Thank you for such a speedy delivery! And my doctor colleagues are thrilled!
i appreciate the amount of info provided in your article. i was in germany for training last year. it was a short time, but one memory i’ll always have is when i tried eiswein in heidelberg. i’m so glad that i finally found someone who could lead me back to it. thanks.
How long will an ice wine keep after opening? At what temperature would you serve the wine?
I have a bottle of Osterriech Burgenland 1983 Ruster Eiswein, will it have kept well enough to drink? Is it of any value?
Wow, that is one old Ice Wine. Osterreich means Austria, Burgenland is the region. Somewhere on that bottle there should be the producer’s name. Can you let me know?
In general an Ice Wine can be cellared for a while but it is not meant to be aged in the bottle for decades like say a Ruster Ausbruch wine or a TBA.
This is due to Ice Wine trying to show clean and fresh primary fruit notes paired with a healthy amount of acidity and these characteristics will generally be in good balance early on and then decrease over time.
A 1983 Ice Wine might be over the hill or very tired, but without knowing the specific production and producer one can only guess.
Nice article about Ice Wine. What do you think about the Canadian Ice Wines that are available from the area around Niagra? They are true ice wine, grapes harvested frozen on the vine. We have visited the area several times, and find their innovations with this type of wine to be remarkable.
Hello Donald, Ted and Maryellen,
First, apologies that my Winemonger cohort did not respond to your comments in a timely manner! Here we go:
Donald- I am so glad we can be of service! There is almost nothing else like a glass of wine that can transport you back to the time and place you first tasted it.
Ted- We have found that an Eiswein can keep for a good few weeks under the right conditions. Cork it tight, or better yet, buy one of those cans of argon (very inexpensive- about $15) and give the bottle a shot before you cork it tight, and then put it in your refrigerator. This will also put the wine at the best temperature for serving- this, or a few degrees warmer, which will happen as the wine sits in the glass.
Maryellen- Truly excellent Ice Wines are being crafted in the Niagara region of Canada. For my taste, some of them lack the zip if acidity that the Austrian versions show, but some people prefer their more “syrupy” texture.
Cheers to all!
I have a bottle of 1983 English Icewine produed by Pieroth at Barnsgate Vineyard, East Sussex - I picked and helped produce it! I know only 500 bottles were produced. Is it worth anything
Where can I buy it in Portugal?
Carlos,
I am afraid I don’t know. I suggest you post that question in the forum of erobertparker.com. Good luck.
The minimum temperature needed to produce Eiswein, expressed in degrees Fahrenheit, is actually a plus 19 degrees and change. Otherwise, how often could Germany and Austria produce these wines?
Yes, the style of Eiswein I prefer is what I’d call ‘clean’ Eiswein, that is, not affected with noble rot (botrytis). However, I’d say the average Eiswein produced today has significant (tastable) noble rot in it, and any producer eschewing the making of Eiswein in years when the grapes are nobly rotten are really the more passionate ones.
John,
Thanks for pointing out the (former) typo of -19 degrees. I can’t quite believe that it took four years for this error to surface.
It is unfortunately true that the average ice wine does have detectable noble rot flavors which will destroy the best qualities of good ice wine.
Similarly unpleasant, I find the flavors that frost imparts on ice wine juice, aka “frost tone”. (For those that haven’t smelled or tasted it, think “dirty snow”.)
Every ice wine will have a frost tone and when subtle the frost tone is generally appreciated.
Each freezing of the grapes increases the strength of the frost tone and the best ice wines will therefore be harvested in years with a strong first frost that allows for a successful and complete harvest.
2006 was such a vintage. These ice wines will arrive in late 09.