The guys who make ice wine are kind of like the Ice Road Truckers or Ice Pilots of winemaking. They don’t harvest their grapes until the dead of winter, when temperatures dip to 15 degrees below freezing. Usually, they work at night, when it’s so cold that the clusters shatter off the vine and the grapes themselves are frozen solid. From their sacrifice, we get the heavenly stuff known as ice wine – sweet, potent and addictive, like wine but superconcentrated, purified by the cold. I got the chance to explore British Columbia’s ice wine country in an article for The Washington Post.
December is harvest time for ice wine in the Okanagan region of Western Canada
By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post
For the grapes, it must be agony.
High above Okanagan Lake, in a frozen corner of western Canada, the wind is whipping through the vineyards in icy blasts. Long after first frost, deep into winter, the grapes here have waited, shivering on the vine. Now, in late December with the temperature falling fast, their polar purgatory is nearly over. It’s harvest time in ice wine country.
Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.
