page_title: Ice wine
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Ice wine / Ice wine producers / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Wine bottles from Dr. Loosen (Mosel) and Robert Weil (Rheingau) showing typical German wine labels
context_page_description: Ice wine is a type of dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape juice to develop. The grapes' must is then pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet wine. With ice wines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Unlike the grapes from which other dessert wines are made, such as Sauternes, Tokaji, or Trockenbeerenauslese, ice wine grapes should not be affected by Botrytis cinerea or noble rot, at least not to any great degree. Only healthy grapes keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an ice wine harvest, which in extreme cases can occur after the New Year, on a northern hemisphere calendar. This gives ice wine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. When the grapes are free of Botrytis, they are said to come in "clean".
  Ice wine production is risky and requires the availability of a large enough labour force to pick the whole crop within a few hours, at a moment's notice, on the first morning that is cold enough.
context_section_description: The most famous (and expensive) ice wines are German Eiswein, but ice wine is also made in European countries such as Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland at least in smaller quantity. Eiswein is part of the Prädikatswein quality category in the German wine classification. The French language term Vin de glace is part of the wine classification in Luxembourg, but not in France, but is sometimes found on the rare bottles of ice wine produced in Alsace. In most of France, the climate is too warm for ice wine production.
caption: Ice wine produced by Ernst Loosen, a Rhine Palatinate-based winery
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