Chateau Ste. Michelle Harvests Ice Wine!

Woodinville, Wash.

A cold snap in Eastern Washington this week allowed Chateau Ste. Michelle to harvest Ice Wine grapes on Saturday, November 15th at the winery’s Horse Heaven Vineyard in Paterson, Washington in the Horse Heaven Hills AVA. When temperatures dropped to 6 degrees Fahrenheit around 3 am in the morning, crews picked Riesling grapes that were frozen solid (at 45 degrees Brix).

“It took over 12 hours to press the frozen grapes and you only get about a third of the juice that you would yield from unfrozen fresh grapes ,“ explains Wendy Stuckey, Chateau Ste. Michelle’s white winemaker. “There’s always a lot of excitement and anticipation every harvest on whether it’s going to get cold enough for Ice Wine. It’s a challenging wine to harvest and make but you are rewarded at the end with such an amazingly decadent wine.”

All of the necessary conditions for Ice Wine came together this week, a hard freeze and ripe, healthy fruit still hanging on the vine. Eastern Washington’s climate with its potential temperature extremes is a perfect candidate to produce great Ice Wine in appropriate years. Weather conditions have enabled Chateau Ste. Michelle to harvest Ice Wine only eight times in the Washington winery’s 45-year history. Previous vintages were produced in 1978, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2013. Chateau Ste. Michelle was one of the first producers of Ice Wine in North America when it released its 1978 Ice Wine.

The juice will undergo a slow, cold fermentation to preserve the rich, concentrated Riesling aromas and natural fruit character. The wine will be available in 2015 under the Chateau Ste. Michelle & Dr. Loosen 2014 Eroica Riesling Ice Wine bottling.

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For further information:
Lynda Eller
media@ste-michelle.com