“Chateau Ste. Michelle welcomed freezing temperatures on Oct. 31st in Eastern Washington by harvesting ice wine for only the fifth time in the winery’s 40-year history. (Ironically, the winery has picked ice wine grapes on October 31st for three out of the five years.) The Eroica White Riesling Ice Wine is an exotic, luscious, ultra ripe wine with concentrated aromas and flavors of apricot and honey.”
-Bob Bertheau, Head Winemaker
The 2006 harvest brought us unique opportunities to make a variety of sweet wines, including a Late Harvest Riesling, Late Harvest Chenin Blanc, Riesling Ice Wine, Chenin Blanc Ice Wine, as well as our prized Single Berry Select Trockenbeerenauslese style wine. With forecasts predicting below freezing temperatures for the evening of October 30th... we decided to pick our botrytis affected grapes for the Single Berry Select during the day of October 30th. Then we picked frozen ice wine grapes that night during the freeze and grapes for late harvest wines the next morning after the grapes had thawed. So we ended up picking grapes for five different dessert wines within 24 hours!
