One of the classic food and wine pairings is Roquefort and Sauternes (French blue cheese made from sheep's milk and sweet botrytis wine, respectively), so it's no wonder the Canadians created their own pairing of blue cheese and icewine. Now Chef Jason Parsons at Peller Estates Winery Restaurant in Niagara has taken the pairing one step further: infusing blue cheese with icewine.
Essentially, Parsons takes a 4-lb wheel of Canadian Blue Cheese, a Blue Benedictine made at the Benoit Monastery in Quebec, scoops out a shot glass-sized chunk of cheese from the center, and fills it with Riesling icewine. The icewine is absorbed by the cheese through the natural blue cheese veins. Over a period of six weeks, the cheese absorbs 2 bottles of icewine.
The cheese is smoother, but not sweeter, and because its sugar content is so high from the icewine, it makes a killer brulee. Unfortunately, Peller Estates isn't shipping to the U.S., but if you're a cheese fanatic and you find yourself across the border, it might be worth seeking out.
Just a few weeks ago I wrote about 
Ice Wine is made when very sweet and ripe grapes are left growing on the vine until there is a good solid frost. Then the semi-frozen grapes are picked quickly during the night and immediately squeezed at low temperatures so they don't defrost. This means that much of the water in the grapes stays frozen. If the grapes melt they cannot be called ice wines and instead have to be labeled Late Harvest wines. The juice in ice wines is very high in sugars, acids, and extract (solids like minerals, proteins, etc.) because it doesn't have as much liquid water in it to dilute the juice. Ice wine grapes only yield around 20% of the juice of normally harvested grapes, so this is a very risky business proposition because one stroke of bad luck can lead to the loss of the entire harvest. High sugar levels in the juice mean high alcohol levels after fermentation of 9-11%abv, but even better high unfermented sugar levels in the finished wine so that it is sweet and balanced.
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