Okanagan Ice Wine

Wine tasting in Canada! I have just had the honor, being of drinking age in Canada, of tasting Canadian ice wine. Canada is only one of three (the others being Germany and Austria) countries capable of producing ice wine due to its winter climate.

In these ice wine producing vineyards, they allow the ripened grapes in teh fall to remain on thier vines and await the tremendously cold weather to freeze the sweet grapes.

During teh winter months, from December to February, when the weather is incredibly cold the sweet and ripened grapes are allowed to freeze on their vines. (Red grapes freeze at -14C and white grapes freeze at -10C). This produces a very concentrated syrupy sweet desert wine known as ice wine.

The red ice wine is a, let's say, delicacy. Each bottle of red ice wine is about 300ml (much smaller than your average wine bottle) costs $108 Canadian here at Okanagan.

But let me tell you, it's well worth it. It's sweet and very tasty; almost like a syrupy grape juice with a little kick. I personally prefered the red ice wine over the white, it was much sweeter and is also more rare.

Let's face it, because of it's unique process and rareness of this product, it's no wonder why the price per bottle is so high. Salute!