German winery Schloss Johannisberg has announced it has been able to produce its first icewine in a decade after temperatures plummeted along the Rhine.
The mercury dipped to below -10° centigrade allowing harvesters to venture out into the cold and pick the frozen grapes.
The initial estimates point to just a few hundred bottles of ice wine being made.
The very specific requirements needed for German icewine means they are one of the rarest of all forms of late harvest wine.
As well as being the first time in 10 years the Rheingau property has made an icewine, it is the first time in 20 years that it has been able to offer, with the 2018 vintage, the complete range of Rieslings through all the various permutations of Qualitäts and Prädikatswein.
With Schloss Johannisberg reporting an icewine harvest it is extremely likely that many other wineries will also have been able to produce the icy elixir this year as they have in Canada and the US as well, including in British Columbia where the style is less common than in Niagara.
