Ice Wine and Wild Raisins

Twenty three degrees eff

And the wild raisins are looking frosty

Shriveled and shivered

Their tender insides are crucified by

A microscopic chaos of crystallized ice

Less water in the drink means more sugar per drop… I think?

Whatever fluid remains is probably sticky sweet

The grapes are waiting

Waiting for the thaw, to lose their inner jellies

Waiting for the thaw, so they may rot and slip from the vine

Or maybe

Waiting

to be plucked and crushed and sucked

No, not waiting

Begging not to go to waste

I could

… Stomp those slush-candies between my teeth

I could

… Spit the blood stained ice cubes to the ground beneath

I could

… Ferment free, artisan ice wine in the heat of my guts

But would that be legal?

Not in Canada or Germany

Not unless the air gets 5 degrees colder

And the measure’s gotta switch to Celsius

***

Author’s note:

I wanted to write about grapes getting sweeter after the first frost, and I was specifically thinking about wild grapes, because they’re notoriously sour.

But then, during my cursory research, I started reading about ice wines and got totally sidetracked— I ended up writing this poem in a very different direction from what I’d initially planned.

Also:

I generally don’t even drink wine, but I think the concept of ice wines is pretty cool. I also think the labeling laws are kinda funny— I get why they exist, you definitely want some uniformity in terms of product naming, so consumers know what they’re getting. But it’s still sorta bizarre to see one country say you can’t call it “ice wine” unless the grapes were harvested at lower than 8*C and another say eight’s not good enough, make it 7*C.

There’s also a general regulation in many countries, that to be marketed as ice wine, the grapes have to be frozen naturally, while on the vine. But… if the weather doesn’t cooperate, your crop just might rot. The obvious work around is to harvest the grapes as per usual, then freeze them artificially, but if you do that, you will not be allowed to call your product an ice wine (even if the end result is indiscernible from a “legitimate” ice wine.)

And while “natural” definitely sounds more appealing in terms of branding, artificial freezing would be so much simpler in terms of everything else! Or atleast in terms of logistics, quality control, production consistency, and pricing.

This wikipedia article goes into more detail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine

Anyway, I’ve never had an ice wine so I really don’t know if they’re all that special.

Have you ever tried one? Do they live up to the hype?

Somewhat related: have you ever tried putting grapes in your freezer overnight before snacking on them? Absolutely kicks them up to the next level. Can’t speak to ice wine, but I will ALWAYS recommend ice grapes.