"IceWine" news and stories

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, nicknamed Canada's Liquid Gold, that luscious and intense dessert wine produced from grapes that freeze on their vines. It was much to my horror to hear that it is possible that there will be no Ice Wine from Canada this year!

Canada produces some of the best Ice Wines in the world. Normally the grapes are harvested during a freeze some time between mid-November and the end of December. Due to the mild winter this year. as of early January there have been no freezes cold enough for harvesting in any of the vineyards in Canada or neighboring US this winter. I was amazed to hear this because of all the news about blizzards and avalanches in Colorado, but then I thought about my local NY City weather where we are having the warmest winter, with no snow fall, since the late 1800's. Call it global warming, long term weather cycles, what you will, but No Ice Wine?

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.

Ice wines can be intensely sweet and tend to have a heavy and syrupy body to them. They have strong, fresh fruit flavors like pineapple and tropical fruit, lychee, peaches, pears, apricots, raisins, spice, and honey. This is the key to ice wines- the fresh fruit flavors, as opposed to botrytized wines which get their sugar levels from the Noble Rot mold with the accompanying mature and aged flavors. The aroma may have fruit and floral notes, combined with assorted spices. For the best taste they should be served chilled to about 45°F, but not ice cold, in an apx. 9 oz. wine glass or a specially shaped ice wine glass like in the photo, to appreciate the flavor and aroma best.

Justifiably, the Canadians are praised for their ice wines. Now they have created a new drink category, ice cider!

Yep, the staple drink of English yokels and hardy Frenchmen in Normandy has been given a Quebeckian (is that the right word?) makeover. Just as ice wine is made from frozen grapes, the ice cider utilizes apples hung late into the autumn. After the frozen fruit is picked, its concentrated juice is separated from the crystallized water around it. This is fermented producing a syrupy, ultra-rich, amber-coloured drink with around 12 per cent alcohol. It is recommended on its own as a dessert drink or as a partner for sautéed foie gras or blue cheese and toasted walnuts. I would really love to try the Neige Rabbit.

Now all we have to do is get the EU to let someone import it; after the protracted negotiations over the importation of ice wine it could be sometime!

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