Ice Wine Lexicon
To become an ice wine aficionado, one must first learn the terminology, like having a program which lists the players at a sporting event. Here are some key terms:
Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA): a regulatory and appellation system for quality and authenticity of origin of Canadian wines made under that system in British Columbia and Ontario. Cellared in Canada is a completely separate category.
Must: is freshly pressed fruit juice, usually grape juice, containing the skins, seeds and stems of the fruit. The solid portion of the must is called pomace and typically makes up 7%-23% of the total weight of the must. It's the first step in winemaking, and because of its high glucose content, 10-15%, must is also used as a sweetener in a variety of cuisines. Unlike commercially sold grape juice, which is filtered and pasteurized, must is thick with particulate matter, opaque, and comes in various shades of brown and/or purple.
Table wine: is a wine term with two different meanings: a wine style; and a quality level within wine classification.
Fractional freezing: is a process used in process engineering and chemistry to separate two liquids with different melting points.
Riesling: is a white grape variety which originated in Germany's Rhine region, an aromatic grape variety with flowery, almost perfumed aromas as well as high acidity. It is used to make dry, semi-sweet, sweet and sparkling white wines. Riesling wines are usually varietally pure and are seldom oaked. As of 2004, Riesling was estimated to be the world's 20th most grown variety at 48,700 hectares (120,000 acres), but in terms of importance for quality wines, it is usually included in the "top three" white wine varieties together with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Riesling is highly "terroir-expressive", meaning that its character is clearly influenced by its place of origin.
Vidal Blanc: is a hybrid of white wine grape, a cross of Ugni Blanc and Rayon d'Or (Seibel 4986). It produces high sugar levels in cold climates while maintaining good acid levels. It was developed in the 1930s by French breeder Jean Louis Vidal to produce vines suitable for the production of Cognac, but due to its winter hardiness, this grape variety is cultivated most extensively in Canada and in the north-eastern United States. It is somewhat resistant to powdery mildew.
Cabernet Franc: is one of the major black grape varieties, principally grown for blending with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the Bordeaux style, but can also be vinified alone. It's produced as a varietal in Canada and the United States where it is made into ice wine.
Seyval Blanc: is a hybrid used to make white wines. Its vines ripen early, are productive and are suited to fairly cool climates, grown mainly in England, New York's Finger Lakes region and in Canada.
Chardonnay: is a green-skinned grape variety used to make white wine. It originated in the France's Burgundy region, but is grown everywhere and for new and developing wine regions, seen as a "rite of passage" and an easy entry into the international wine market.
Kerner grapes are an aromatic white grape variety, named in honour of a poet and physician from Swabia.
Gewürztraminer: is an aromatic wine grape variety that performs best in cooler climates. It is sometimes referred to colloquially as Gewürz. It's a variety with a pink to red skin colour, which makes it a "white wine grape" as opposed to the blue to black-skinned varieties commonly referred to as "red wine grapes."
Chenin blanc: is a white wine grape variety from the Loire Valley and its high acidity can be used to make everything from sparkling wines to well-balanced dessert wines.
Pinot blanc: is a white wine grape, a genetic mutation of Pinot noir.
Ehrenfelser: is a white wine grape variety of German origin, created by Dr. Heinrich Birk (1898-1973) at the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute in 1929, by crossing the varieties Riesling and Silvaner.
Merlot: is a darkly blue-coloured wine grape used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines. Merlot-based wines usually have medium body with hints of berry, plum, and currant.
Pinot noir: is a black wine grape variety, the name derived from the French words for "pine" and "black" alluding to the grape variety's tightly clustered dark purple pine cone-shaped bunches of fruit. Pinot noir grapes are grown around the world, mostly in the cooler regions, widely considered to produce some of the finest wines in the world, but a difficult variety to cultivate and transform into wine.
Cabernet Sauvignon: is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties grown among a diverse spectrum of climates from the Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon became internationally recognized through its prominence in Bordeaux wines where it is often blended with Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Syrah or Shiraz: is a dark-skinned grape grown throughout the world and used primarily to produce powerful red wines. Syrah was estimated in 2004 to be the world's 7th most grown grape at 142,600 hectares (352,000 acres).
Maderisation: is a process that involves the heating and oxidization of a wine. The term is named after the process used in the production of Madeira wine, where it occurs while the wine is still in cask. The resulting wine darkens in color and acquires a Sherry-like character. Outside Madeira wine, it is generally seen as a wine fault, but is desirable in the case of certain dessert wines where it occurs over the course of long bottle aging.
Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx): is the sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by weight (% w/w) traditionally used in the wine, sugar, fruit juice, and honey industries.
Must weight: is a measure of the amount of sugar in grape juice (must), and hence indicates the amount of alcohol that could be produced if it is all fermented to alcohol, rather than left as residual sugar.
Sauternes is a French sweet wine from the Sauternais region of the Graves section in Bordeaux. Sauternes is made from grapes that have been affected by Botrytis cinerea, also known as noble rot. This causes the grapes to become partially raisined, resulting in concentrated and distinctively flavored wines. Production is a hit-or-miss proposition, with widely varying harvests from vintage to vintage.
(Source: Wikipedia; photos taken by Mike Keenan at the
Twenty Valley and
Niagara on the Lake Icewine Festival)
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