Is ice wine (eiswein) to Sauternes the equivalent of white zinfandel to Zinfandel? ok ok rose then.
That makes no sense at all.
I know but my real question is ice wine just the cheaper version or lesser version of Sauternes.
Kind of a strange question, but if serious, the short answer is: no. Both are sweet wines made from ultra-ripe grapes, but Sauternes is made from grapes infected with botrytis (which both desiccates/concentrates them and adds the flavors of botrytis), while eiswein is typically not infected with botrytis, but just very ripe grapes that are frozen by the environment, then pressed immediately to yield more concentrated juice.
Answered before you clarified in your later post. There are very expensive Eisweins made, particularly in Germany, that are ultra-high quality, and extremely desirable.
ice has to be frozen on the vine 17F or below hard freeze …ice produced sugars around 42% to 52 %
Sauternes are late harvest, although wind whipped and weathered they produce sugars around 28% or brix
so ice wine is to passito style Click on me
or straw wine styles where they dehydrate the grapes until the sugar is like ice…
your close, just off your mark, but I get what you are asking …
Shalom, Salute !!!
White Zin being a rosé made from bleed wine which would normally be disposed of.
Sauternes is generally less expensive than Eiswein. Yquem is an exception to that, but generally high quality Eiswein costs much more than Sauternes.
Top Eiswein is not some cut rate product, but rather world class sweet wine.
I know a couple of Eisweine fanatics that look down on Sauternes as a lesser product. So in some circles you make have exactly the wrong end of the stick.
No.
I have had few ice wines and all from Canada. How about a few recommendations for a decent German, Austrian or French eiswein in the $50-$75 range that is purchasable in Illinois.
To quote Greg Tatar: “It’s like the distinction between ham and refrigeration.”
Cheap German Eiswein is never ‘worth it’ to me. The newly released Prum 04 is a treat but well over $250 a bottle.
I’m not really a fan of Canadian versions, often too heavy. Though I’ve only tried a dozen or so different ones.
Sorry but your price range is woefully inadequate. You can never experience proper good quality German Eiswein in that price. Go to wine searcher and look for Donnhoff Oberhauser Brucke Eiswein to give you an idea of what world class eiswein actually costs. This is a life altering experience in a bottle. I don’t think there are any French eisweins either.
Good Luck
Brodie
Ice wine is also made in European countries such as Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark (I’ve never seen this though !), France, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland at least in smaller quantity.
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.
German law states -7 Celsius or colder, and Canada -8 Celsius or colder, when picking.
-Soren.
Søren, Danish icewine is made from artificially frozen grapes, they are not frozen on the vine. It doen’t get cold enough at the right time to make ‘proper’ icewine/eiswein, at least not with any reliability.
That guy, whoever he is, makes no sense at all. We are talking about two wines, both made of grapes. Both are primarily made in the same region, germany, austria, etc. both are dessert wines. Ham to regrigerator is way off. I think a better comparison would be an orange to a clementine.
Setting aside tradition and the rules, can someone explain what practical difference this makes? In other words, if, say, Donnhoff picked the Brucke grapes a couple of weeks before the actual freeze and froze them artificially and bottled the result, how much different would it be from real Eiswein and why?
I have not the slightest idea whats available in Illinois, but simply go to wine-searcher.com - type EISWEIN , restrict the search to AUSTRIA … and the you will see a lot of (good, better, not so good) producers.
Then try to find them in Illinois …
You can repeat that for Germany.
There are very few Eisweins (if at all) made in France !
Not sure about the practical difference in taste, but
- it´s not allowed to call the result Eiswein …
and 2) the difference will be at least in “value” - the same as between a natural diamond, and an artificial one …
Taste a freezer wine against an Eiswein and the difference is clear.