Day Twenty Seven - Ice Wine

Dear all

Such a beautiful day and prime time for sampling some freezer-fresh Ice Wine. I have been meaning to try Ice Wine for months and months but for some reason never got around to it. My fabulous neighbour Connie popped over this afternoon to drop off some flaxseed so we cracked open a bottle that Linda and I have been keeping aside for a special occasion.

We sampled an ice wine from the Niagara based Lake View Cellars (http://www.lakeviewcellars.ca/). Ice wine is widely produced here in Canada the quality of which is world renowned. It is produced from grapes that have been frozen on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids of these grapes do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape and once pressed a much smaller amount of very sweet wine is produced. A vine would normally produce sufficient grapes to make one bottle of wine, but frozen grapes will produce a glass which explains the often dramatic differential in price between the two. http://www.winesofcanada.com/icewine.html

I didn't think I would like the ice wine as much as I did as I have a slight aversion to very sweet liquid things but I was very pleasantly surprised. Upon sipping the wine, it was very sweet but has great balance achieved by its acidity which gives it a very clean finish and almost tropical flavor. It was actually very refreshing.

I would highly recommend trying Ice Wine and at the very least use the fabulous bottle as a candelabra.

And in other news:

1. I will keep you all posted on Gandalf's ever expanding rack. Growing at a staggering rate and sprouting at least an inch per day, the nodules of last week are looking more and more 'antler'-like....