Wednesday December 22, 2021
“That was a Christmas present”
Longed for a cold snap – ice wine harvest begins
Total loss or specialty? Winegrowers are faced with this decision every year and yet have no influence on the outcome of the bet. But courage is rewarded these days. The ice wine can mature in the cellars.
The cold snap this week brought the first ice wines of this winter to vintners on the Nahe, the Moselle and Franconia. “That was really a Christmas present,” said the President of the Franconian Viticulture Association, Artur Steinmann. In Sommerhausen am Main, the last harvest of the year was brought in early in the morning at minus eight degrees – the winemaker is hoping for around 150 liters of the wine specialty.
For an ice harvest, the grapes must be frozen through. This requires at least minus seven degrees Celsius for several hours. The overripe grapes are picked and pressed while frozen. Ice wine is particularly sweet because a large part of the water remains in the frozen fruit and the sugar content is very high. The aromatic ingredients of the berries are retained in concentrated form.
The first ice wine of the winter was already harvested on Tuesday in the Korrell Johanneshof winery in Bad Kreuznach-Bosenheim. According to the vintner on the Nahe, the grapes had a high value of 142 degrees Oechsle – the Oechsle degrees indicate the must weight, the sugar content and other dissolved substances in the grape juice. In the Moselle wine-growing region, the Dr. Hermann read Eiswein in the municipality of Erden, as announced by the German Wine Institute in Bodenheim near Mainz.
“Overall, compared to previous years, the early ice grape harvest with very healthy grapes promises high-quality ice wine specialties,” explained the wine institute. For this winter, 152 companies in Rhineland-Palatinate have registered a total area of around 107 hectares for a possible ice wine harvest. In the previous year there were only 93 farms with a total of 72 hectares. Ice wine is always associated with risk for companies. In the 2019 vintage, vintners in Rhineland-Palatinate waited in vain for frost. If it is not cold enough, it means a total loss for the winemaker.