For the second year in a row, B.C. winreries are celebrating the province’s second earliest icewine harvest.
Some winemakers, however, decided to wait for a longer stretch of cold weather.
Summerhill Pyramid Winery staff started picking frozen grapes on November 19, when the temperature hovered between -9 and -11 C. International regulations require the temperature to be at least -8 C.
In a release, the British Columbia Wine Institute said it expects proprietors at the 26 wineries anticipated to make icewine this year to wait until later in December or January to pick their grapes.
“The Okanagan is a long valley and temperatures vary,” Tinhorn Creek Estate Winery co-owner Sandra Oldfield told Business in Vancouver November 22.
“We got close. It was -8 C and then it hit -9 C in the morning, but the temperature was on the way up, not down.”
It has since rained and Oldfield fears that the four tonnes of grapes that she left on the vine will rot.
“Picking early is better for us,” she said. “Once you start getting rain and then warmer weather, the grapes can rot.”
Last year, she harvested grapes on November 22, when the temperature sat at -9 C. Other wineries, such as Tantalus Vineyards, hold off until November 23, when the temperature hit -17 C.
According to the BCWI, the earliest icewine harvest in B.C. history was on November 5 in 2003.
Glen Korstrom
@GlenKorstrom