Thank you IndigoBloom for this nice CANADIAN sample!
Ice Wine Tea seems to be something you can only get in Canada. Don’t exactly know why. Maybe Canada has special ice or snow or a load of grapes from New York or California froze one year and someone like Krystaleyn studing grapes and drinking tea at the time had a brilliant idea.
Whatever the case was, voila…ya got Ice Wine Tea.
I kept pestering Indigo-B for some “Please”, when we did a tea swap and I was delighted to see some tea bags (don’t say that often) to satisfy my Ice Wine Tea curiosity.
I was careful not to over-steep the teabag…and once the hot tea cooled a bit the flavor unfolded.
There was a ruby red, seedless grape flavor at the correct stage of ripeness without too much sugar and a bit on the dry side. The type I buy and plop into the freezer to eat like popsicles on a hot day in August or September.
Although I’ve become used to loose leaf tea with big flavor, the scent and taste was mild and pleasing, fruity and not astringent. The wine flavor was not overpowering to the base ceylon tea.
I let my cup cool, added stevia and ice cubes and it was really good! The tea became creamier and was better than hot in my opinion.
People who liked this
Comments
In short…it’s because the grapes are picked after a freeze at a certainly elevation and at a certain vicinity of water and/height and temp :)
A longer and more technical explanation…
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 a more concentrated grape must to be 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”.
Due to the labour-intense and risky production process resulting in relatively small amounts of wine, ice wines are generally quite expensive.
Canada and Germany are the world’s largest producers of ice wines. About 75 percent of the ice wine in Canada comes from Ontario.[
Ohhhhh.
:) CHEERS!!!
Just my two cents but I like Design A Tea’s version a bit better but still I do like this one as well! Ice wine tea is YUM!
awww glad you like it Bonnie! I love ice wine… a frozen dessert that’s not really frozen :P
In short…it’s because the grapes are picked after a freeze at a certainly elevation and at a certain vicinity of water and/height and temp :)
A longer and more technical explanation…
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 a more concentrated grape must to be 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”.
Due to the labour-intense and risky production process resulting in relatively small amounts of wine, ice wines are generally quite expensive.
Canada and Germany are the world’s largest producers of ice wines. About 75 percent of the ice wine in Canada comes from Ontario.[
Ohhhhh.
:) CHEERS!!!
Just my two cents but I like Design A Tea’s version a bit better but still I do like this one as well! Ice wine tea is YUM!
awww glad you like it Bonnie! I love ice wine… a frozen dessert that’s not really frozen :P