Ice wines distill summer's bounty into honey-like nectar
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NORTH EAST -- So this is why they call it "ice wine."
Slideshow: View a chilly morning in the vineyards as Bob Mazza and his crew harvest Vidal grapes for ice wine.
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Savor ice wine at big festival or at homeIt's 6:20 a.m. and so dark you can't really see, but that black void we're stepping toward? It's Mazza Vineyards near Lake Erie, 140 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The big lake is right over there, from where the north wind blows.
It is cold. Freezing cold -- about 12 degrees below freezing. The hard earth is frosted with snow.
This doesn't seem like ideal weather for this morning's task -- harvesting the grapes for ice wine -- and it's not.
It really should be colder.
That's no solace to one of the bundled figures moving along the stiff, leafless vines. "This," John Oliver quips, "doesn't fit the image of picking grapes in Tuscany."
Snowflakes flit through the headlight beams of the two trucks they've pulled to the edge of the frozen field and left running so the shadowy figures can see the grapes.
Only there don't appear to be any grapes. Just sparse bunches of shriveled, brownish things that look like raisin rejects.
Most of the Vidal grapes were picked mechanically months ago, in late October, and by now are bottled as Vidal Blanc wine. But Mazza purposely left the grapes on these four long rows, covering them with netting to protect them from hungry birds. Then the vintners waited -- for the wind and sun to dehydrate the grapes and for the temperature to drop low and long enough to freeze them hard as marbles.
That's what has to happen before the grapes can be turned into true ice wine. They also must be pressed frozen. That means some of the water inside the skins is discarded as ice crystals, resulting in a juice, and eventually a wine, with concentrated sugar, acid and color.
If you've never tried ice wine, or icewine as it's sometimes written, imagine a honey-like dessert wine. If you have had it, you can probably taste it. And if you're one of these pickers, well, you can literally taste it in the sticky residue on your frosty fingers.
"This is liquid dessert," Kathie Mazza says cheerfully, as if she's not wrestling cold clumps of grapes from the netting into plastic bins. "You want to savor each and every drop."
The future savoring couldn't be any sweeter than for this hardy band of eight workers and volunteers who wanted to be part of this year's annual rite.
It's already sweet because it looked as if this harvest might not happen. The unusually balmy fall and early winter threatened this season's ice wine, not just in northwest Pennsylvania, but in the entire Lake Erie/Lake Ontario basin, which is an ice wine hot spot. In fact, a boom in Ontario has helped Canada explode into the world's top producer of this rare and pricey delicacy, much of which is exported to the United States and Asia.
As laid out in news reports, Pennsylvania's ice wine grapes usually are picked in December. Pickers work almost always in the dark to prevent grapes from thawing from the sun. Federal regulations say the grapes have to be naturally frozen. Stricter Canadian rules, which some American wineries follow, require that air temps drop to at least minus 8 degrees Celsius -- or 17 Fahrenheit. If those conditions aren't met, the wine can be sold as "late harvest," or ice wine-style wines, which still are sweet but command lower prices.
This year, it just didn't get that cold. The grapes were getting too dry and dropping off the vines.
"We've all been praying for cold weather," said Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the wineries on the Chautauqua Lake Erie Wine Trail. Last week, it looked as if finally they would get it, but only for a night or two. Mazza Vineyards' Bob Mazza decided to pick his grapes in the pre-dawn of Jan. 17.
"It's our shot," he said, having been in this business long enough to know that, with ice wine, as with so many other things, you get what nature gives you.
Picking that morning, he was concerned that the fruit was too far gone. But as the pickers moved inland, the grapes got a bit less grandmotherly. The yield was going to be way down and the wine would taste noticeably different. But that's not necessarily bad, as ice wine always gets its character from the vagaries of time and temperatures.
Speaking of which, the veterans all have picked ice wine grapes in much lower temperatures, more brutal winds and deeper snows. They've also endured a well-meaning volunteer who tried to lead them in song. This year, the sound track was mostly sniffles and a few jokes about how picking felt like prison work release.
Bob Mazza, left, has been making commercial ice wine at his vineyard in North East since 1984. Unlike the fall-harvested grapes, the grapes used for ice wine must be hand-picked.Click photo for larger image.
From left, Kent Taylor, Gary Mosier and John Oliver pick grapes from netting that is wrapped around the vines. The nets protect the crop from birds and from falling to the ground before harvest.Click photo for larger image.
Under the gray skies of 8 a.m., Bob Mazza peered out from his hood and said, "If you guys want to --"
"Go home?" John Oliver interjected.
They were only going into the winery to thaw out over the coffee, bagels, doughnuts and fruit the Mazzas had spread out. Mr. Mazza couldn't resist bringing out a bottle of his 2004 ice wine. It says right on the label: "Harvest date Dec. 19, 2004."
Mazza ferments ice wine for a month to six weeks, until it tastes right; the alcohol content can range from 9 1/2 to 12 percent.
Enjoying his nectar's balanced residual sweetness and acidity, and its flavors of apricot and fig, Mr. Mazza joked that the difference between it and late-harvest California wines is subtle: "Usually about $15 a bottle."
Like most ice wines, Mazza's is sold in smaller (375-milliliter) bottles. But it still has a much bigger price tag: $40.
That's about 10 times as expensive as his regular Vidal Blanc wine, Mr. Mazza explains, but then, the ice wine takes a lot more grapes and work and risk.
Since Mazza became the first Pennsylvania winery to make a commercial ice wine in 1984, it has produced as many as 4,000 bottles and as few as 600 (they buy juice from other Lake Erie appellation growers, too). They've just sold out of the 2004 vintage and now are selling the 2,200 bottles of 2005. The 2006 yield will be lower -- about 1,000 bottles -- but Mr. Mazza doesn't expect it'll be much more expensive than the $43 for the 2005. He considers ice wine to be his flagship.
In recent years, ice wine has become so, well, hot, that more wineries in more temperate areas have taken to picking and then artificially freezing grapes to make ice wine-style wines.
Mazza also makes one like that called "Crystals of Steuben," and soon will release a "Crystals of Chambourcin." They're half the cost of ice wine, which Mr. Mazza says has a "mystique" that continues to seduce consumers.
"[With] ice wine," he says, "it seems like no matter how much you produce, you can sell it," in part because of its story. "Sometimes you're selling not wine -- you're selling a story."
That story includes the picking, which at many wineries has become, as Mr. Mazza puts it, "a cult thing." At Schuylkill County's Galen Glen Vineyard -- its 2005 Vidal Ice Wine just won not only Best Dessert Wine but also Best of Show over a record 219 wines entered in the 2007 Pennsylvania Farm Show -- volunteers wear head lamps and call themselves "the Fellowship of the Ice Wine." (They were saddened that they didn't get to pick at all this year.) In Canada, couples have paid $1,000 for the privilege of chilling with celebrities on ice wine-picking fund-raisers.
Mr. Oliver, the volunteer who still had to go to his day job as president of the Erie Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, said he's told Mr. Mazza for years he'd like to help, but always had another commitment. "This time I didn't think fast enough," he said before adding, "I really enjoyed it. ... What a great experience."
No one grumbled about numb toes as they loaded the full bins into one of the trucks and then dumped them into the press.
Then Mr. Mazza teased: "One of you guys is going to have to take your shoes off and get in."
Bob Mazza carries grapes harvested before dawn on Jan. 17. In the 22 years Mazza has been making commercial ice wine, this year's harvest was the latest.Click photo for larger image.
First Published January 25, 2007 12:00 am
