Picked up 2006 Vidal Icewine juice from Neufeld Vineyard
Today Kim and I drove down to Niagara-on-the-Lake to pick up some Icewine Juice from the Palatine Hills. The grapes are from the Neufeld Vineyard.
The weather was beautiful and sunny as we left Toronto, but turned to snow squalls once we hit St. Catharines and the driving from then on was terrible. We arrived a little later than our appointment date, and managed to get there just as a tour bus worth of people were settling into a tasting.
We went out back to meet David, the head winemaker. He was pumping 10,000 Litres of Vidal Icewine juice into 10 large containers for shipment to another local winery, but agreed to spare some time to answer some of my questions on this year's icewine juice, as well as the Riesling and Gewurtz I made back in October.
Despite the relatively late harvest, David said yields this year were only off by about 15% on the Icewine, and flavours have been concentrated and excellent. He seemed pleased with the harvest.
We then tasted some of the Vidal Icewine juice he had set aside for me. (In December I had also asked for some Gewurztraminer juice, but had cancelled the order about a week ago once I found out it was going to be $60/L.)
The Vidal juice was amazingly sweet; it clocked in at 37% sugar and tasted predominantly of honey and lychee with some spicy overtones (cloves & nutmeg maybe? Think mulled cider at Christmas). I've always loved the lychee flavours of typical Niagara Icewine, and was a little disappointed the Icewine I made last year didn't have any of this. So I'm pleased that this year is so promising.
David suggested I use 1118 Prise de Mousse as my yeast instead of R2, which I used last year. I should mix up a good starter, and ferment at low temperatures between 12°C and 15°C for 2 to 3 weeks, stopping fermentation (by putting it out in the cold) at 20°B residual sugar.
He hadn't tested the acid levels yet, but believed the TA was in the neighbourhood of 1.05 to 1.1 g/L. He recommended I check the levels after fermentation and cold stabilization, and draw it down to 9 g/L with Potassium Bicarbonate if it doesn't get there naturally.
You can follow the progress of this wine during fermentation by reading my winemaking notes
After talking about the Icewine, I poured him a sample of my 2006 Gewurztraminer so he could chime in on the off-odours that were still showing. He noticed the "shoe polish" smell right off, and said Palatine's Gewurzt wasn't showing any of this at all. He thought it might be a little VA and recommended I use Bocksin & CombiGel to get rid of it. He even gave me enough to use.
And that was pretty much it. We stuck around for a tasting (the Cab Sauv Icewine is to die for) and bought a few bottles of their white vidal, which Kim and I like as a dinner companion.