It was a frigid January night in 2008, an evening which begged for a big red wine that could warm you up with one sip. The furnace was running and my wife and I were covered in blankets, looking forward to a cozy night. Never did I imagine that I’d be waking up at 4 the next morning, piling on layer after layer to harvest wine grapes as the sun rose. It just took one phone call from grape grower – and neighbor – Martin Schulze to make this scenario a reality.
“We’re harvesting grapes for ice wine tomorrow,” he said. “We’re starting at 5.” I’d had some ice wines in Ontario and I knew that participating in the harvest was something not everyone gets to do, so I decided to bundle up and brave the frigid morning. It was very much a case of being in the right place at the right time: Mother Nature determines when conditions are right for harvesting ice wine grapes, and I knew how lucky I was to be able to experience the sights and sounds of collecting frozen grapes in a white winter landscape.
But if you don’t know what ice wine is or have never had a chance to taste one, you’re not alone. There are only a few places in the world where natural ice wines can be consistently produced (Western New York being one of them), which is why they are considered a luxury item by most definitions. With the average price per 375ml bottle fetching $45, and the higher-end versions commanding upwards of $300, it just isn’t something the everyday wine drinker is exposed to all that often.
Locally, that could change – thanks to a burgeoning ice wine industry that has developed off the shores of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, which have climactic conditions similar to those on the Canadian side of the border (where ice wine is well known and has a world-class reputation). Mazza Vineyards in Northeast Pennsylvania has been making ice wine for 25 years, with their first efforts coming only a year after Inniskillin’s first. Winemaker Mario Mazza sees ice wine as Mazza’s flagship. “It’s what we take a lot of pride in,” says Mazza. “Ice wine is one of the things we make the least of, but yet it’s one of the things that we put our most concentrated effort into.”
For their part, Niagara USA wineries have exploded onto the ice wine scene, with several award-winning efforts since 2008. Schulze Vineyards and Niagara Landing have both won gold medals for the estate Vidal ice wines in the last year, while Arrowhead Spring Vineyards, working with Ontario grapes, shattered the 90-point glass ceiling for New York wineries with a 90 point rating by Wine Spectator (WS) for their 2005 Vidal Blanc ice wine.
Duncan Ross, winemaker and owner of Arrowhead Spring Vineyards has seen a steady increase in demand for his ice wine since the recognition from WS. That high score has helped open the doors up for new wholesale accounts that might have been hesitant to pick up a $40 bottle of local wine. Since then he finds more and more people walking into his tasting room are asking for ice wine these days. “We doubled our production of 2007 from 2005 and with the 2007 just about gone already, we again doubled our case count in 2008,” says Ross. “No matter how much we make, we continually sell out.”
Grower Martin Schulze recently changed the landscape of Niagara ice wine with one of the only known ice wines made from just Catawba grapes, Schulze’s Block Three Ice wine. This native grape will never be looked at the same way again since Martin took a chance with his thirty year old vines by letting the netted grapes hang into January. “It’s (Catawba) is a late ripener with enough acidity to prevent it from rotting and dropping prematurely. It just made sense to try it and we’ve had great results.”
Winemaker Jonathan Oakes, of Leonard Oakes Winery in Lyndonville, NY made his first Vidal ice wine this year after training across the border. His experience working vineyards in both regions gives him a unique perspective on how close the Niagara USA region is at achieving a similar success to Ontario’s. “We’re right there in terms of climate and soil but the hardest sell will be convincing people that we can make it just as good,” says Oakes. “We’ve got a leg up on so many other wine regions that just can’t do it.”
The price point might prove difficult as well, but there’s a good reason for ice wine’s hefty price tag. Production is difficult, and must conform to certain standards for the wine to even be labeled as ice wine. The grapes must be naturally frozen on the vine, which can only be achieved when temperatures drop into the mid teens for several days in a row. Hand harvesting then must take place at night or in the early morning while temperatures are perilously low. As difficult as that sounds, the grapes need to then be crushed outdoors with the temperatures still low enough to keep the water in those grapes frozen, thereby yielding only a few drops of pure nectar per grape.
The resulting juice consists of very high sugar and high acidity. With all that sugar, the right yeast is then chosen to ferment the juice into wine. This process can take months to finish as all that sweetness can slow down fermentation. In the end, it’s the delicate balance of acidity and natural sweetness that makes ice wine so unique.
Of course, you can’t talk about ice wine without talking about Canada – the Niagara Peninsula, to be exact, directly across the border. There’s no doubt that Inniskillin has been a pioneer in developing Niagara ice wine into the world-class product it is today. Bottles with the Inniskillin name can be found all over the world, with many making their way into the finest restaurants onto the best wine lists. With the help of other Niagara Peninsula brands like Hillebrand and Pillitteri, Canada has become the largest producer of ice wine in the world.
But whether you’re crossing the border, heading south of Buffalo or shooting up to the Niagara County tasting rooms, chances are you will have an opportunity to taste what all the buzz is about. To some that may be enough, but to myself and hundreds of other volunteers in the region that get up at the crack of dawn to harvest these frozen grapes, a bottle may last the night, but the experience harvesting ice wine lasts forever. I’ll never forget celebrating the end of the harvest with Martin Schulze and his family by capturing the first sweet drops of juice dripping from the press in our glasses of sparkling wine just before we toasted to the gift our region has become known for…the world’s best ice wine.
Bryan recently moved back to Western New York to be a part of its fledgling wine industry after working in television and film in Miami and New York City. He works with several local wineries and contributes as the Niagara Region Editor of the New York Cork Report (newyorkcorkreport.com). He blogs at waterintowino.com and at niagaraescarpment.net.
