"Eiswein" Einstein

Yesterday began with a large truck bringing us our frozen Viognier from this years harvest. According to the driver it was kept in a freezer unit that never got above negative 30 degrees! Needless to say the grapes were solid when we received them. If you have never frozen grapes before you eat them you should really try it... They become so sweet! So the boys started unloading frozen bins of grapes into the press, and I even got my hands dirty, which ended fairly quickly when I realized everyone else was wearing gloves and my hands were numb... This Viognier is going to be our Eiswein also known as our Nektar. Eiswein is the German pronunciation of ice wine which most people are more familiar with. Ours is technically a mock ice wine because to be considered a true ice wine the grapes must freeze on the vine. Making a desert wine is a rather labor intensive process so this wine most likely will not be ready for a long time. We aged our last Nektar for two years in barrel!

Since the grapes are frozen solid it is important to press them off very slowly. If it is done too quickly the bladder, or bag inside the press could tear, which is an expensive fix. This press is so slow that not much was even accomplished yesterday. Stephen was at the vineyard rather late last night and came back in early this morning to continue the pressing. According to Stephen they will probably be doing the same thing this time tomorrow! Since the grapes are frozen we extract a lot less juice from them. Typically with a ton of grapes we can squeeze out roughly 165 gallons of juice. With frozen grapes, we will receive just 45-55 gallons per ton!

Stephen brought me a little sample of the wine and let me tell you it is sweet! Current readings are at 45 brix.... and to give you some sort of comparison all of the other Viognier we brought in this year was around 24 or 25 brix. Brix is a measurement of the level of sugar in a wine or the grapes themselves. Stephen told me his goal is to make this about 10% residual sugar. I guess we will have to wait and see how things shape up!

 Can you believe that becomes this?