This year’s Ice Wine harvest was the earliest on record here at Staller Estate, Nov 22. Along with the earliest Ice Wine harvest it was also the shortest window that we have ever had to harvest Ice Wine. Temperatures were forecasted to reach a low of 4-7F (depending on the forecaster) early Nov. 22 then bounce back up to the mid 20’s later in the morning of Nov. 22. We need to have temperatures at least 12F for several hours but we prefer less than 9F which gives us more time to harvest and process the grapes. November 22 was a very sleepless night for me. All the equipment was ready and staged, thanks to Wendy, and now I just had to make sure the forecast would hold true. I was up every hour checking the temperature, at 1am the temperature was 10F, by 4am it was 6F, time to head to the vineyard to start the Ice Wine harvest. The temperature had dropped to 5F by 6. We started the Ice Wine harvest before sunrise, each picker equipped with a headlamp, picking bin and warm cloths as we all worked very quickly.

First Ice Wine bunches to be harvested 2015

Joe Harvesting the first Ice Wine grapes of 2015

By 7 am, just before sunrise, the temperature reached its bottom at 4F. From this point we need to make sure we worked quickly in order to harvest all the Ice Wine grapes before they warmed up too much. By 8:30am the temperatures had reached 9F and we had completed harvesting every frozen Ice Wine grape in the vineyard.

The last Ice Wine grapes to harvest 2015

Now it was time to crush the frozen Ice Wine grapes which took about 30 minutes. When we crush frozen Ice Wine grapes they come out of the crusher with the consistency of peanut butter, thick and pasty. We then work very quickly to put the crushed Ice Wine grapes into the press so that we can begin to extract the very thick syrupy Ice Wine grape juice. When the first Ice Wine juice comes out of the press basket it is thick like maple syrup and leaves a long thread of Ice Wine juice as it drips.

Pressing Ice Wine grapes takes much longer than a typical grape press since we are pressing a very concentrated juice through a pack of water frozen as ice. It takes many hours to do one press. Thus, it is very “pressing” but also very rewarding and relaxing!!

Wendy, done with the pressing and ready to clean out the frozen press-block.

Read about 2014 “Ice Wine 2014 revealed”