Icewine harvest underway

Troy Osborne doesn’t know what day it is.

The director of viticulture for Inniskillin and Jackson-Triggs wineries has hardly slept the past two days because he’s been up for the harvest of grapes for icewine.

Plus, the very nature of picking the grapes in the dark, either side of midnight, leads to confusion.

For instance, Wednesday night’s activity was really 4 a.m. Thursday, and Thursday night’s picking actually happened on Thursday, but also Friday morning.

“That’s what happens when you’re operating on very little sleep this time of year,” said Osborne with a laugh.

But Osborne was wide awake for all the decisions on when to pick and why.

Technically, the temperature has to plunge to -8 C in order to freeze grapes, concentrate the sugars and make them suitable for making the unique, sweet dessert nectar we call icewine.

However, Inniskillin and Jackson-Triggs take many extra steps to ensure conditions are perfect.

If the temperature is forecast to hit -8 C or below, the experienced crew of 25 is put on notice and they turn up as the mercury dips, ready for the word to spring into action.

However, Inniskillin and Jackson-Triggs don’t just want -8 C. They want the brix (sugar content) of the grapes to be 41 or 42 as well.

A brix represents one gram of sucrose in 100 grams of juice. Therefore, 41 or 42 is a high concentration.

Regular table wine grapes tend to be around 22 brix.

Icewine rules allow for brix as low as 35, but Osborne wants more.

“Once the temperature reaches -8 C, we start sampling the grapes multiple times,” he explained.

“The picking crew is mobilized at 38 brix, we keep testing, and when the brix climbs to 41 or 42 we start harvesting. By then, it’s usually been -11 C or -12 C for three hours.”

On Thursday, that combination of forces came together at 10:30 p.m. Pickers started snipping frozen bunches of grapes off the vines and didn’t stop until 4:30 a.m., when the temperature rose to -8 C.

Icewine is a big deal in the Okanagan because it’s one of the few regions in the world where it’s warm enough to grow wine grapes in the summer, but cold enough in the winter for icewine.

As such, it’s an exotic product in both the domestic and international markets.

Inniskillin, in particular, has made icewine one of its flagships, and it’s yielded results. The winery consistently wins awards for the sweet elixir, including this year’s best dessert wine trophy for Inniskillin Vidal Ice Wine 2016 at the prestigious London Wine & Spirits Competition.

Over the two nights, the Inniskillin and Jackson-Triggs crew picked about 100 tonnes of Riesling and Vidal grapes for icewine at the Black Sage North Vineyard.

Such volume makes it one of the largest, if not the largest, icewine producers in the Okanagan.

The Black Sage North Vineyard is high above Oliver on a bench of land that is consistently three or four degrees colder than the Valley bottom.

There are still around 15 tonnes of grapes to be picked, but Osborne doesn’t expect them to come off the vines soon.

The overnight low was forecast to be -7 C last night, and tonight’s low is expected to be the same.

And for Sunday and Monday, it warms up even more with predicted lows of -2 C and -3 C, respectively.