Oregon Public Broadcasting

This week’s bitter cold weather has a tasty upside.  It has allowed Northwest winemakers to harvest ice wine.

It takes a hard freeze with healthy, ripe fruit still hanging on the vine to make this special dessert wine.  Chateau Ste. Michelle head winemaker Bob Bertheau says this is only the seventh time in the winery’s forty-year history that the right conditions presented themselves.

Bob Bertheau: “What happens is that in the press, the majority of the liquid stays behind as ice.  So therefore what does get pressed though is this ultra-concentrated solution -- elixir I like to call it -- of the juice, the grape juice.”

Bertheau says his harvest of five acres of Riesling vines yielded just 200 gallons of precious nectar.  He expects this year’s vintage to hit the market sometime in 2010. 

Winemakers all the way up to British Columbia’s Okanogan Valley were also harvesting ice wine this week.