Ice wine

[Charlesthewino]

Have you made any ice wine? Aside from the frozen grapes is the process any different? A friend of mine said ice wine is the sweetest and best tasting wine he has ever had. Sounds interesting...


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[acorn]

Not very much different, except for the fact that you need frozen grapes, as you mentioned, in order to get rid of water component of the juice, and leave only concentrated sugar-rich syrup behind with original S.G. over 1.160. This entails not only low yield and high costs of production, it also makes it very labor intensive and impractical (if not to say impossible) to do it at home. Freezing is not only required to extract the syrup, but also to stop the fermentation when desired (deep freezing required).

Of course, you can buy already extracted juice from commercial sources, but be prepared to spend a small fortune on it. However, when done right, the work bears its fruit, as ice wines are very delicious and rich. You will find many of them bottled in 375 ml or smaller bottles. Compared to other wine styles, ice wine is a "sipping" wine, akin to some dessert wines out there.

 

[BernardSmith]

Never made wine from grapes and although this is not technically "ice wine", I don't see why you could not take regular grape must and freeze it and then allow that frozen juice to thaw while collecting the juice that thaws and drips soonest. That thawed liquid will contain far more of the sugars than the juice that melts later and if you constantly monitor the gravity or the refractive index of that must you can stop collecting the juice when the sugar content drops below the level you are looking for. I make iced cider this way and you can double the sugar concentration (and flavor) if you are willing to lose about 2/3 of the original volume (in other words, 6 gallons of juice will yield about 2 gallons of "ice wine" . Again, technically "ice wine" is made from grapes that are frozen on the vine (and so , presumably they also develop late in the growing season). This version uses regular fruit and freezes the pressed juice to extract more flavor and sugar per gallon.

 

[Charlesthewino]

Not very much different, except for the fact that you need frozen grapes, as you mentioned, in order to get rid of water component of the juice, and leave only concentrated sugar-rich syrup behind with original S.G. over 1.160. This entails not only low yield and high costs of production, it also makes it very labor intensive and impractical (if not to say impossible) to do it at home. Freezing is not only required to extract the syrup, but also to stop the fermentation when desired (deep freezing required).

Of course, you can buy already extracted juice from commercial sources, but be prepared to spend a small fortune on it. However, when done right, the work bears its fruit, as ice wines are very delicious and rich. You will find many of them bottled in 375 ml or smaller bottles. Compared to other wine styles, ice wine is a "sipping" wine, akin to some dessert wines out there.

This entails not only low yield and high costs of production, it also makes it very labor intensive and impractical (if not to say impossible) to do it at home.

I would have thought just the opposite. Seems like it would be easier for a homeowner to harvest what few vines he/she might have on the right day vs. a commercial winery trying to coordinate an entire group on the first day it drops below freezing. It also appears that time is of the essence here as you want to control the thaw rate. Again, much more difficult on a large scale.

 

[Charlesthewino]

Bernard, so if I understand you correctly you are freezing the apples. Then allowing a partial thaw and pressing? I'm trying to determine how to extract the higher sugar content juice. I assume then if you freeze the fruit then allowed a full thaw...it would essentially be the same as if you did not freeze it?

 

[acorn]

Actually not, the fruit is not thawed - it is pressed frozen (preferrably outside where it is cold), so only the liquid syrup runs down, while you discard the frozen part with high water content. Though not a very good analogy, but think of it as disgorging sparkling wine, where the frozen cap with yeast hulls is removed, leaving clean wine behind. Using basket fruit press for pressing frozen fruit may be just asking for trouble, which is why I said it is complicated to do at home.

 

[seth8530]

You can cheat a bit and make something akin to ice wine by taking pressed juice and freeze fractioning as was discussed above... But like also mentioned, get ready from them losses!

Really, the hardest part of this whole process would be getting a good final gravity and alcohol to balance. Since, I am sure backsweetining is not really going to be part of this process. So, one could try to arrest the fermenation ( risky without the right equipment) or you could hope the yeast stall out at a good time and then you could get it cold for a while to drop the yeast and then filter... Plus, do the whole sulfite and sorbate thing.

 

[BernardSmith]

My technique is the one that Seth refers to. I get my juice from a local orchard and so I freeze the juice if I am looking for an "ice cider". I don't have the equipment to effectively press the juice from apples, though I would love to make cider from my own blend of apples (the orchard's apple juice is good enough but it is really designed for drinking unfermented).

 

[nicklausjames]

Buy the juice. Last spring I bought some Chilean sauvignon blanc and froze the. I tried pressing and got very little juice. I just let the grapes melt and made wine as normal. Came out great but was not sweet like typical ice wines. Of course you may have a different experience.