This very special sweet wine, produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine, presents itself with a brilliant amber color. The nose is dominated by hazelnuts. In the mouth it tastes very sweet, with a balancing high acidity. The aftertaste is fairly long but significantly less rich than I would have expected.
This wine is much simpler than I would have anticipated and overall a pretty disappointing experience. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe at 12 years old the wine has passed its prime, maybe this bottle is not a very good example of Eiswein to start with. Since I’m not planning to taste the amount necessary to acquire enough experience that would allow me to make a more precise judgement, I will never know.
The secret to produce Ice Wine is processing frozen grapes at around -7 ºC (20 ºF). By this temperature water freeze, while sugars and other dissolved solids don’t. The grapes’ must is pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a small amount of concentrated, very sweet wine.
It typically takes 4–5 times as many grapes to make ice wine than it is necessary to produce regular wine and its price reflects it. I bought this half bottle directly from the winemaker in Zell on the Mosel for 18 EUR (in the nearby, but more touristic town of Cochem the same bottle was selling for 25 EUR).
The high price of ice wine is also justified by the fact that it is one of the hardest type of wine to produce. Moreover, its production is risky: the frost may not come or only after the grapes rot or are otherwise lost. For this reason ice wine production is limited to the few world’s wine-producing regions where the necessary cold temperatures can be expected to be reached with some regularity.
It supposedly all started in the late eighteenth century with Riesling grapes in Germany, but nowadays Canada, where Vidal Blanc grapes are popularly used, has become the largest producer of ice wines in the world, thanks to consistent freezing. Other grapes that grow well in cold climates and can be used to make ice wines are: Gewürztraminer, Grüner Veltliner, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. In Germany the production of Eiswein has recently being decreasing due to climate change and change in consumers’ taste.
Country: Germany
Region: Mosel
Grapes: Riesling
Type: Sweet
Vintage: 2007
Producer: Weingut Haas-Lenz
Price range: Premium (30-50 US$)
Pascal’s Enjoyment Index: 3/5