Get to Know Ice Wine, the Intensely Sweet, Painstakingly Hard-to-Make Dessert Wine

• By WineBottleMag
• February 3, 2025
• Dessert HardtoMake Ice Intensely Painstakingly Sweet Wine
• With 0 comments

Call it eiswein (if you speak German), icewine (if you’re Canadian—it’s trademarked) or ice wine (if you’re American); whatever the nomenclature, the intensely sweet, painstakingly hard-to-make dessert wine that conjures images of wooly sweaters and warm fires is an indulgent anomaly in the wine world. 

Unlike other “stickies” like Sauternes or Tokaji, ice wine grapes are not affected by the noble rot, Botrytis cinerea. And unlike dry table wines, they’re not harvested in the autumn, but in the dead of winter, starting in December. 

If the weather cooperates and temperatures remain consistently below freezing—which feels increasingly rare in the age of climate chaos—an ice wine harvest is a surefire way to ruin a wine picking teams’ holiday plans. Off they trudge to the vineyards, often in the middle of the night, to freeze their tushes off while hand-picking hard-as-rocks grapes (those that haven’t been taken by critters, that is). 

Extreme Concentration, Slow Fermentation

After harvest, the ultra-ripe frozen berries are quickly and laboriously pressed. The water inside them freezes, but the sugar, acids and solids do not, so the precious little liquid eked out is extremely concentrated. 

It can take up to six months to ferment to a final alcohol level of around 10%. The resulting “liquid gold” is rich, viscous and sweet, with oodles of dried fruit and honey flavors.

On average, these bottles boast 220 grams of sugar per liter—we’re talking double that of a can of soda—lifted by tangy acidity.

Master of Wine Jancis Robinson once described good ice wine as tasting like “a cross between the purest form of grape juice and a slap in the face, so vibrant is the acidity.”

Frosty Hardy, Aromatic Grapes From Freezing Climates

Ice wine (not to be confused with iced wine, where late harvest grapes are commercially frozen after being picked) is made from a range of cold hardy, aromatic varieties like Vidal Blanc (especially in Canada and the U.S.), Riesling and Gewürztraminer. It can also occasionally be found in red form, made from varieties like Cabernet Franc.

In Europe, Germany leads the eiswein charge, with Austria at its heels, but can be found at small scale in most of the continent’s chillier countries.

As Europe warms, Canada now reigns as the world’s largest ice wine producer. 

In the U.S., New York State rules a frosty roost, although the style is crafted across many northern states, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.

China has also emerged as a major ice wine player, produced in comparatively large quantities in the country’s northern Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces from longstanding hybrid varieties commonly used in North America, like Vidal Blanc. 

Because of its high risk, little reward nature, ice wine can be costly to produce and purchase. Sold in half bottles, it retails for anywhere between $30–$150 a pop, making it a treat to savor for special occasions or to sip slowly, well chilled, with a cheese board or cookie plate.

Here are four top ice wine regions to wrap your mittens around:

Germany

While mentions of using frozen grapes for wine production appear as far back as Roman times, eiswein as we know it started by accident in 1794 in Germany’s Franconia region when farmers were forced to make the best of an unexpected frost. However, it remained a rare beast until the 1960s when production ramped up thanks to the invention of the pneumatic press and other technological advancements that made production easier.. 

Made primarily from Riesling, Germany legally requires temperatures to drop below 19.4° Fahrenheit (-7°C) before eiswein grapes can be picked. Although these temperatures aren’t as common as they once were, when a good freeze does hit, producers across Germany’s 13 wine regions craft some of the finest examples of eiswein in the world.

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Austria

Austria, like Germany, has been producing “noble” sweet wines called Trockenbeerenauslese for over 500 years, but ice wine is a relatively new phenomenon. The first was produced from vineyards near Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland in 1971. Today, when the weather cooperates, ice wines are made across most Austrian wine growing regions, including in Niederösterreich, Wien and Steiermark.

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Canada

It was bound to happen. As soon as German and Austrian immigrants realized Canada’s warm, sunny summers and long, cold winters were ideal for grape ripening and then freezing, they couldn’t help themselves. 

Icewine was first produced commercially by Ontario-based Inniskillin winery (co-owned by Austrian Karl Kaiser) in 1984. Winning a prestigious award in 1991 put Inniskillin’s—and Canada’s—icewine on the world’s radar. 

By the early 2000s, the country surpassed Germany to become the world’s largest icewine producer. Ontario, and particularly the Niagara Peninsula, produces the lion’s share, but the famed dessert wine is also made in British Columbia, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

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New York

Like Germany, New York and Riesling go together like cheese and crackers, so it’s no surprise that the northeast state is also a hot spot for ice wine production (although the dominant variety for the New York version is Vidal Blanc). 

The state’s northwestern regions—the Finger Lakes, Lake Erie and Niagara Escarpment—all get cold enough winters to produce ice wine fairly consistently. While the number of producers crazy enough to attempt this appendage-numbing style changes year-to-year, it’s an important enough part of New York wine culture to warrant a festival dedicated to celebrating the Empire State’s now-famed ice wine scene.

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More Dessert Wine Coverage

• Your definitive guide to sweet wines.
• Vin santo, the sweet “wine of saints,” is poised for a revival.
• Everything you need to know about late-harvest wine.
• When in Rome, dunk cookies in wine.
• Can sweet wine’s U.S. image be rehabilitated?
• Sugar high: a quick guide to sweet red wine.

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