 TASTINGS By DOROTHY J. GAITER AND JOHN BRECHER Sweets for Your Sweet Why Sweet Wines are a Great Choice for Celebrating Valentine's Day For Valentine's Day this year, think about giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "sweets for my sweet." |
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Icewine from Canada
Just as its name implies, Icewine is made from grapes that have frozen on the vine, concentrating their juice into a tiny amount of sweet nectar. Some wineries around the world use a shortcut in which the grapes are simply frozen after they're picked; these wines tend to cost less and, we think, are not as intensely pleasurable. The classic Icewine is Germany's Eiswein, which is rare and very expensive…
The Icewine you're most likely to see these days is from Canada, which has made quite a name for itself in Icewine over the past decade or so. The most common label is Inniskillin, which is fine because its Icewines are reliably delicious. We very much like its Riesling Icewine but, in general, we prefer Icewine made from the Vidal grape, which creates an almost-clear wine of particular, face-slapping intensity. The Vidal grape, with its sweet, fleshy earthiness, seems particularly well-suited for this type of wine. For this tasting we tried Inniskillin's 2005 Vidal, and we wrote of it: "Sweet and tight and as clean as fresh-fallen snow, with pure, focused, white-grape tastes. Tastes like concentrated fruit."
