Winemaker Notes
Schmitt Sohne Icewine is a type of dessert wine, grown in Rheinhessen, Germany and produced from frozen grapes that are harvested while still frozen on the vine. Gently pressed, so the Ice crystals of the water will stay in the grape and only the concentrated fruit juice is processed. This Icewine has strong aromas, remembering on tropical fruits, voluminous and essence rich on the palate.
This wine should be enjoyed on its own, but goes also very well with a wide range of fruit-based desserts but also rich and intense cheeses are spledid partners for an Icewine.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
