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Christina Kelly,
Avalon Wine Senior Editor

Christina Kelly spent the first half of her career as a journalist for daily newspapers and magazines. She left daily journalism to work in corporate marketing/communications, but as a passionate wine enthusiast, she continues to write about the Northwest wine industry (since 1997) for many national publications.

Christina is a multiple fellowship winner to the Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa, including 2012. Christina has written for Avalonwine.com for the past 12 years. She can be reached at winewriter@comcast.net.

Jean Yates
Avalon Wine Owner

Jean first worked with the Oregon wine industry in 1989, when she helped develop marketing brochures for wineries in the South Willamette. She then started Avalon, and has supported the industry through her wine shop and web site ever since. Jean enjoys promoting Oregon and Washington wines and bringing Northwest wines to the notice of the wine-loving public across the country. She previously worked in high tech marketing and research in Silicon Valley.

Jean built and continually updates the Avalon web site, writes our Wine Club Newsletter, numerous e-mail articles on NW wine, and articles for the web site. Her twenty five years of experience working with NW wineries and winemakers gives Avalon a deep knowledge of the industry. She's judged NW wine at various competitions since 1997. Jean's favorite activity is photography, and many of the images on the Avalon web site are hers. She's from NC via Palo Alto, and lives in the South Willamette wine country.

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July 28, 2010, at 2:22 pm

Canadian Ice Wine – One Tiny, Super-Concentrated Drop

By Jean Yates Avalon Wine, on July 28th, 2010

ice-wine-gen-bottle-200pWe sent out an email about Canadian Ice Wines today. I tend to take them for granted – they are pretty easy to get here in the Pacific Northwest. But I gather from our customers that they’re hard to get just about everywhere else.

“True” Icewines are really hard to make. You have to allow the grapes to freeze and thaw several times on the vine before picking them. Harvest happens in the middle of the night, while the grapes are fully frozen. The weather has to behave perfectly. And then you get one tiny, super concentrated drop of juice from each grape.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to try quite a number of ice wines over the years.  Many of them were cloyingly sweet. But the best were sheer ambrosia, balancing sweetness with acidity.

One of my favorites of the “true” Canadian Icewines is the Inniskillin Sparkling Ice Wine.  We wrote about it a few years ago on the website  – Sublime aromatics of fresh lime, apricot, grapefruit and peach blossoms with a slight mineral edge. A racy interplay of sweet and tart offer up echoing flavors of lemon, lime and candied apricot. Truly a vibrant and refreshing experience!

The Inniskillin Sparkling Ice Wine is outrageously expensive ($62.95 for a bottle that serves 6-8 people in small glasses) but if you don’t turn up your nose at sweet wines, it’s pretty dang amazing. I like to give this wine at birthdays and weddings – it gets raves at the reception. Let’s face it, a lot of people like sweet wine, and if that’s their thing, why not give the best.

If you want to spend less for very similar wines, try the Icewines from Washington State and Idaho. Two of the best are the Covey Run Reserve Semillon Ice Wine 06 $20.66;  and the Saint Chapelle Riesling Ice Wine $18.86.

July 28th, 2010 | Category: Jean's Blogs | Comments are closed

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