Ice wine
Ice wine refers to a wine made from frozen grapes. To do this, the grapes are left on the vine until late winter, which reduces the yield. There is also the risk of losing the entire harvest.
Eiswein is also a predicate under German wine law for quality wines . It belongs to the wine quality level of the predicate wines and, according to the German wine law, is on a par with the predicate Beerenauslese .
Ice wines are high quality, very thick, naturally sweet wines . Red wine varieties can also be used, which then result in a pure white ice wine due to the pure white juice of these berries. The natural frozen concentrate is made from grapes that are harvested frozen at a temperature of at least −7 ° C and then immediately pressed in the winery. The highly concentrated must is then fermented, is given the title ice wine after being tested by the responsible test center and is usually reduced in volume.
Most of the water contained in the berries crystallizes out when the temperature remains below −7 ° C. Only the sugar contained in the grapes binds non-crystallized water and fruit acids. The result is highly concentrated, very sweet wines. They usually have a strong, highly aromatic acidity , which is an important counterbalance to the intense natural sweetness of these wines.
German ice wines are a special wine specialty, especially those made from the Riesling grape variety . They enjoy a worldwide reputation as rarities and are counted among the most valued natural sweet wines by wine critics and experts in the wine market .
Even Austria is a traditional producer country of high-quality ice wine. Small quantities of ice wine are also produced in Luxembourg . Canadian Icewine represents the largest production in terms of volume. Ice wine is also produced in the USA (Oregon and Michigan) and New Zealand .
history
The birthplace of German ice wine is the municipality of Bingen-Dromersheim . "Probably the very first ice wine in Germany was picked on February 11, 1830 from grapes from the 1829 vintage in Dromersheim near Bingen."
1829 was actually a bad wine year. When the winemakers in Dromersheim in the middle of winter and after heavy frosts still picked the grapes, which were initially not harvested because of their poor quality, to feed them to the cattle, they found that the grapes had little, but wonderfully sweet juice had a high must weight . The ice wine was made from the grapes that were then pressed.
For a long time Germany and Austria were the only countries in which ice wine was made. In 1975 Canada also started production and is now the world's largest ice wine producer. The special (and more expensive, since it can be produced in smaller quantities than many other wines) wine is mainly made from Vidal Blanc , Chenin Blanc and Riesling .
In 2019/20, in view of the mild winter, only four wineries were able to harvest ice wine on December 5, 2019 (in Baden am Kaiserstuhl, in Bad Dürkheim-Ungestein in the Palatinate region and in Sprendlingen in the Rhine-Hesse region) and on January 22, 2020 (in Remstal in Württemberg).
Manufacturing
The grapes are left on the vine until they have frozen through, which can happen until February. They must be read and processed while frozen . The sugar content of the grapes is seen as the most important quality criterion. Here, already musts with over 250 ° Oechsle been measured. In Germany and Austria , the must weight of the grapes for the production of ice wine must at least correspond to the prescribed must weight of the Beerenauslese predicate .
The juice from frozen grapes can only be squeezed out under the appropriate pressure - for this reason, particularly powerful screw presses are usually used for ice wine pressing . The result is a low yield because much of the water remains in the frozen grapes.
"For the winemaker it's all or nothing, because ice wine poker carries the risk of total loss, especially in this year [2003] with its mild late autumn." Only around 10 percent of the original amount is ice wine in the bottle. The rest of the grapes are cut out selectively or fall victim to the unpredictable weather conditions.
Technically, every natural sweet wine production requires a water reduction, concentration of the fruit juice; With the conventional method, you simply wait longer with the harvest (hence the term Spätlese ) or select the particularly ripe berries manually ( Auslese ), in extreme cases, until the berries are completely dry like raisins ( Trockenbeerenauslese ). With ice wine, this reduction occurs mainly through freezing, as the water freezes before the fruit components and can be separated from the must concentrate using physical methods during further processing.
In many years the early ripening of the grapes does not allow the ice wine grapes to hang on the vine for long enough. Beerenauslese, however, can be produced in almost every good year.
When pressing on the wine press, it is necessary to constantly check how the must weight (the sugar content) changes in order to prevent "watering down". With extremely high must weights and because of the inevitable low temperatures, there is a risk that alcoholic fermentation will not start, i.e. no ice wine will be produced.
Much more acid is retained, the reason for the characteristic acidic note. Due to the loss of water, the yield from ice wine production (as well as from Beeren- and Trockenbeerenauslese) is extremely low, and there is often a high proportion of manual labor under adverse conditions (cold, darkness), which explains the high prices. The harvest is usually carried out in the early hours of the morning when the temperatures are at their lowest. This has the advantage that the warming that takes place during the day cannot have any significant influence on the condition of the grapes.
Basically, early frost, preferably in November, is particularly beneficial for the ice wine quality. If, on the other hand, the frost does not come until January, then fresh and elegant ice wines are rarely produced because the grapes have suffered from the weather and the rot has then progressed.
However, this myth of hard winemaking work has been put into perspective to some extent. If German ice wines are also offered in the discounter, this is due to the fact that machine harvesting is permitted in the German federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate . Hand picking, on the other hand, is mandatory in Hessen.
In some countries (e.g. New Zealand ) a type of ice wine is also made “artificially” by freezing normally harvested berries. This method is also known as cryo-extraction in Sauternes, for example, for high-class, noble sweet white wine: the technical shifting of the natural process of frost into the cold store. This “frosting” process is prohibited by law in Germany .
quality
Ice wine production requires healthy grapes that are not affected by noble rot . If the grapes are not always in good health, there is a risk that volatile acid (mostly acetic acid ) will be formed by acetic acid bacteria . If this exceeds the legally tolerated value of 1.2 g / l for white wine, it is referred to as vinegar tinge and the wine may not be marketed.
Ice wine is mostly made from white grapes. The Riesling variety is particularly popular in Germany , as it can give the very sweet ice wine a particularly elegant interplay of acidity and sweetness. In contrast to noble sweet wine specialties such as Beerenauslese or Trockenbeerenauslese , ice wine is characterized by fresh acidity and intense fruitiness without botrytis notes, which is supported by a reductive expansion during production . Ice wine is usually characterized by a relatively low alcohol content and a high concentration of sweetness and acidity, which makes it preserved and particularly durable.
Eiswein is bottled, just like the quality levels from Auslese upwards, usually in 0.375 liter half bottles or half liter bottles. Good ice wines can be stored for decades if properly stored. The sweetness is broken down in the bottle, so that matured ice wines taste less sweet than young ones.
vintage
Even if the grapes for an ice wine are not harvested until January of the following year, the wine receives the vintage in which the grapes were grown. For example, grapes picked in January 2016 are sold as 2015 ice wine.
Legal
In Rhineland-Palatinate , winegrowers who want to read ice wine have been required to register since 2013 . For this purpose, the vintners must first report the location (district, corridor and parcel number), the area in m² and the grape variety of the intended ice wine harvest by November 15 of the harvest year . Appropriate wine inspectors check the quality of the grapes. The reporting requirement became necessary because in 2011 a large part of the supposed ice wine was not recognized by the auditors. 102 companies registered for this in the first year.
literature
- Willi-Dieter Osterbrauck: Eiswein and Gewürztraminer. Wine brochure from A – Z for connoisseurs and lovers. Compact-Verlag, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-8174-3187-2 .
- Cornelius Lange, Fabian Lange : The Wine Lexicon. Completely revised and supplemented new edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15867-2 .
Web links
- Eiswein - The wine that comes out of the cold
- Ice harvest in the Adolzfurt Schneckenhof and Bretzfelder Goldberg
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Gerhard Troost : Handbook of cellar management. Vol. 1: Technology of Wine. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1972, p. 33.
- ↑ Jancis Robinson : The Oxford Wine Lexicon. Hallwag Verlag, Munich 2003, pp. 216, 328, 437.
- ↑ Hans Ambrosi : The wine that came out of the cold. In: Wine and Sekt Journal. Mainz 1990, 6, pp. 10-12.
- ↑ 2019 ice wine is an absolute rarity press release of the German Wine Institute from March 3, 2020
- ↑ German Wine Institute , Archive 2003.
- ^ Gerhard Troost: manual of the cellar economy. Vol. 1: Technology of Wine. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1972, p. 588.
- ↑ Till Ehrlich : 200 questions about wine. Honestly answered. Hallwag Verlag, Munich 2006, p. 148.
- ↑ Minister Ulrike Höfken protects ice wine producers ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Viticulture Minister Ulrike Höfken protects ice wine producers ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the Ministry of the Environment, Agriculture, Food, Viticulture and Forests RLP dated February 2, 2012.
- ↑ Minister Höfken presents the results of the ice wine samples: "Improve control procedures, protect producers" ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Viticulture Minister Höfken: Improve control procedures, protect producers ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture, Food, Viticulture and Forests RLP of May 8, 2012.
- ↑ Important decisions for the quality of the ice wine ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the Ministry of the Environment, Agriculture, Food, Viticulture and Forests RLP of August 22, 2013.
- ↑ Balance of wine control 2012: “Wine inspectors ensure fair competition” / New pre-notification obligation for ice wine presented ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ulrike Höfken Ministry for the Environment, Agriculture, Food, Viticulture and Forests RLP from September 9, 2013.
- ↑ Vintners swear about the obligation to register ice wine on volksfreund.de from September 9, 2013.
- ↑ The German wine vintage 2013 is threatened with price increases from Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from November 18, 2013.
