Ice Wine Civil War
by Felix Lim
@ 17 Jan 2014
Makers of Canadian ice wine are set to go to war over who and what is ice wine. The fight between the makers of this wine in the Canadian states of Quebec and Ontario goes back to the manner of harvesting and production. Ice wine is wine made using grapes that have been frozen and thawed multiple times such that they shrink and the liquid is concentrated in the middle. Makers of the wine in Quebec utilise a method of collection known as the “hammock” method, where the grapes are snipped off the vine after the first frost and kept in nets over the vines. This is because of the thicker snowfall in Quebec which would otherwise bury the vines. Makers of ice wine in Ontario, where this production started, have cried foul and consider this deviation to be of lower standard. The federal government plans to define the term “ice wine” as “made exclusively from grapes naturally frozen on the vine”, which would prevent the Quebec makers from calling their wine “ice wine”.
