The Vintage
Simply stated, 2004 was a phenomenal year for growing grapes and making wine regardless of grape variety. Due to the tremendous success of our 1999 Chardonnay Ice Wine, we gambled again with two and one-half acres of Chardonnay and were handsomely rewarded with one of natures great winemaking treasures.
The Grapes
As one might expect, our winemaker and cellar crew were quite busy from late-September through mid December bringing in the seasons regular harvest and working with the young wines. The Chardonnay left hanging on the vine for the Ice wine gamble, as we were watching weather forecasts in hopes of cold weather. On December 15thth, cold weather did occur. We discovered to our delight not only were the grapes frozen but they also had raisined due to a gorgeous botrytis (noble mold) infection. A mere 13.4 tons of frozen Chardonnay fruit was harvested. The harvest Brix was a remarkable 42! The acidity was 9.5 grams/liter and the pH was 3.63 (pure perfection).
The Winemaking
The naturally frozen grapes were painstakingly whole-cluster pressed over a three-day period. The highly extracted, fragrant, rich juice (syrup actually), was cold settled two days and racked to a stainless steel tank. Normally, between 160 and 170 gallons of juice per ton are pressed from Chardonnay grapes during the regular harvest. The yield from our frozen grapes was only 90 gallons per ton. The Swiss cultivated yeast strain Wadenswil 27 was utilized to conduct the fermentation. A very long, cool fermentation period finally ended on January 31st, 2005. The wine was settled and sterile filtered.
Winemaker's Notes
It is massive in structure, extremely full bodied and seamless in presentation. Despite the 20.3 grams/liter (20.3%) residual sugar, the wine is perfectly balanced with 9.5 grams/liter acidity. The nose is of luscious tree ripe peaches, dried apricots, honeycomb, and tangerine. The flavors are again, very ripe peach, honey, pineapple, orange blossoms and tangerine with a generous ripe Bartlett pear note. This wine has the potential to cellar decades quite possibly 30 plus years.
| Brix: | 42 |
| T.A.: | 9.5 grams/liter |
| pH: | 3.65 |
| ACL: | 13.2% |
| RS: | 0.3 grams/liter |
| Cases produced: | 966 |
| Release Date: | Fall of 2005 |