It’s a special time of year for the region’s winemakers.
Unlike seasonal holidays, there is no assigned date for ice wine. Instead, winemakers must wait for the perfect conditions to begin producing one of Okanagan’s most unique exports.
“Normally winemakers can pick their grapes whenever they believe the flavour is right, but not when it comes to ice wine,” explained Mission Hill winemaker Darryl Brooker. “It’s actually written in Canadian law that it has to be at least -8°C to be considered ice wine, but at Mission Hill we look for about -10°C or -11°C.”
With the arctic cold front sweeping into the Okanagan those perfect conditions could happen any day now.
“It all happens so fast due to the conditions, which makes the experience quite exciting and even magical in a way,” said Brooker. “We have heaps of folks who are keen to come out for the harvest, which generally happens between 8 p.m. and 12 p.m. so everyone is bundled up, there’s snow on the ground and hot drinks going around. Everyone has a lot of fun despite the chilly conditions.”
Some years the perfect conditions never actually occur and no ice wine is made. But it appears the appropriate temperature of -10°C will arise within the next couple of days.
“Ice wine gets its special sweet taste because the frozen grapes provide a much higher concentration of sugar and flavour,” explained Brooker. “A kilogram of grapes will normally yield a bottle of wine but due to the high concentration a kilogram of grapes will only produce about a 100 milliliters of ice wine.”
Compared to wine made from summer grapes, ice wine has a fairly quick turn around, meaning that Mission Hill’s 2017 vintage ice wines will be on store shelves by May or June of next year.
