How to Make Ice Wine
- 1). Grow grapes to make ice wine. Most ice wines are made with Riesling, but you can use Muscato grapes and other varieties as well. For a true ice wine, you will have to live in an area of the world where the climate allows the grapes to ripen on the vine and then remain there until there is a hard freeze. The grapes typically freeze at about - 9 degrees C, or 15 degrees F. Canada, Germany and the northern states in the United States have been able to produce ice wines.
- 2). Harvest your grapes after the hard freeze. You will have to do this in the early morning.
- 3). Press the grapes when they are still frozen. The water in the grapes forms ice crystals. This concentrates the sugars and the acids in the grapes. This process will lessen the output of wine, but makes for the sweeter dessert wine that is typical of a good ice wine.
- 4). Differentiate between ice wine and ice box wine. You can make ice box wine by freezing grapes that are harvested when they are ripe. A true ice wine is defined as made with grapes allowed to freeze naturally on the vine. While icebox wines are still sweet dessert wines, they are not as expensive or as time consuming to produce.
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