By Glen Korstrom
Weather that frustrated Okanagan winemakers in the summer has turned out to be a boon for B.C. dessert wine producers this fall.
That’s not only because the fall included the November 22 deep freeze, which resulted in the Okanagan’s second earliest ever ice wine grape harvest (in 2003, winemakers harvested grapes on November 5).
The fall also included damp weather that fluctuated in temperature enough for the desirable botrytis fungus to flourish in parts of the usually dry region.
Okanagan Falls-based Wild Goose Vineyards principal Roland Kruger told Business in Vancouver that his winery is making its first totally affected botrytis (TBA) wine in six years because botrytis mould has not appeared in his vineyard for the past five years.
Every grape in a TBA wine must be affected by the botrytis fungus. That distinguishes it from other wines that are labelled “botrytis affected,” but which Kruger said can be made from a mix of botrytis-affected and fungus-free grapes.
He plans to charge up to about $100 for each of the 250 375-ml bottles of riesling wine that will be TBA’s 2010 production.
The higher prices come because botrytis-affected wines are expensive to produce. The so-called “noble rot” also dehydrates grapes, which intensifies the flavours in the juice they retain.
Tony Stewart’s Quail’s Gate Winery produces what’s believed to be B.C.’s only other TBA wine. Unlike last year, Stewart decided to save some blocks of grapes for icewine production.
“It was a challenging year,” Stewart said. “To ensure that some blocks ripened, we cut crop. Our yields were down significantly in some areas: merlot and cabernet sauvignon.”
It was a similar story at Tantalus Vineyards, where production winemaker David Paterson told BIV that poor growing conditions for bigger red varietals prompted a change in business strategy.
Paterson didn’t plan to make a syrah icewine. But because there was little summer heat, he left his acre of syrah grapes on the vine long enough to freeze and be used for icewine.
Paterson had initially planned to make icewine from only an acre of riesling grapes.Because starting icewine production is far more difficult than simply expanding an existing production process, winemakers who hadn’t planned to make any icewine were likely left with a lot of unripened red varietal grapes.
“You wouldn’t choose to make an icewine unless you really wanted to,” said Tinhorn Creek Vineyards owner Sandra Oldfield. “It’s really a pain. I don’t think people who couldn’t get their grapes right this year said, ‘OK, let’s make an icewine from it.’ Icewine is a different beast all together.”
The complexities of producing icewine include:
- grapes must be picked in temperatures of at least -8 Celsius;
- much of the yeast dies immediately because the juice is so sugar-packed, so the fermenting process takes several months instead of only one month;
- the grapes take longer to press and the juice is harder to filter; and
- packaging is more expensive.
Oldfield likens her two-hour icewine grape harvest to other seasonal activities such as decorating a Christmas tree.
“We serve soup and hot chocolate afterward and whatever spirits to keep warm,” she said. “If we expanded our icewine production from being more than one acre, then it wouldn’t be fun at all. I wouldn’t be happily tweeting about it. My tweets would be like, ‘It’s Day 40 of icewine picking. I hate my life.’”