Icewine grapes likely picked this weekend

Nearly-frozen grapes will likely be picked from a dozen Okanagan vineyards this weekend for the production of icewine.

The temperature fell to –7 C early Friday morning, one degree shy of the level that’s required for the grapes to be harvested.

But lows of –9 C were predicted for early Saturday and –8 C on Sunday morning as a mini Arctic outflow descends on the Okanagan.

“The window for picking looks like it’ll open this weekend,” Scott Hennefent, general manager of the Summerland-based B.C. Wine Authority, said Friday.

The ice wine harvest also took place around the end of January in 2020, Hennefent said. The latest harvest has been well into February and the earliest was in October. Both events took place in 2002.

Twelve Okanagan wineries have registered their intention to pick grapes for icewine this winter, down from more than 20 in recent years. The decline is attributed to wineries having a lot of product left over from last year due to the lack of international tourists in the Okanagan because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daytime highs in the Valley are only expected to reach –3 C through the weekend and into early next week. After a low of –8 C on Sunday, overnight minimums will rise slightly to about –6 C, too warm for the picking of grapes left out for icewine.

Minus 8 C is the specified temperature for icewine harvest because that’s the point at which the water in the berries, but not the sugars, has frozen. The crushing process yields a small amount of extremely sweet juice, which ferments relatively quickly.