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.
Dessert wines are fascinating to me, not only for their scrumptious sweet tastes, but also for the many complicated and unusual ways in which they are made. Most, but not all dessert wines tend to be higher in alcohol than regular wines. This is due to the large amount of sugars in the fresh juice, the more sugar, the greater the final alcohol levels produced during fermentation. 
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