The following message was posted to: CANWINE

Hi all

At 3 a.m. yesterday, we took advantage of a narrow window of
opportunity to harvest part of our Icewine crop, as temperatures
dipped below the required -8C (17.6 F).

A dozen warmly bundled pickers faced the cold winds and harvested
over a ton of Riesling grapes from the estate vineyard next to the
winery. With the aid of car and tractor headlights shining down the
rows of vines, we plucked the rock-solid berries into buckets. At 7
a.m., as the sun began to rise, the temperature rose to -8C again,
and the harvest was interrupted.

Slow pressing yielded about 400 litres of highly concentrated juice,
measuring 37.2% sugar. This is well above the required threshold for
Canadian Icewine, 35% sugar.

I'm very happy with the both the quantity and quality of the harvest.
The Riesling grapes were beautifully mature going into this picking.
That means a good amount of juice, and more importantly, rich, ripe
flavours for the resulting wine.

This was the earliest Icewine harvest in the Okanagan Valley in a
number of years, and marks a welcome change to recent Icewine history
for us. The last six winters have been unusually mild, and have
prevented us from making our trademark Icewine in three of those
years. Previous to that, we had an unbroken record of consecutive
vintages of Icewine, going back to its inaugural in 1978.

Cheers
Tilman

Forwarded for interest.
--
Regards
Chuck
So much wine; So little time!

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