2006 Vidal Icewine: first tasting
I tasted the icewine today for the first time since fermentation completed. My first impression is underwhelming: boozy and fairly dumb.
I'm current aging the wine in a few different containers:
- One 3g carboy and a couple of 750ml bottles. These were racked fairly clean and are being left to cold stabalizing in the storage unit, unharassed.
- And a 500ml polycarbonate bottle which is now sitting in the back of the fridge. I'm experimenting a little more with this one: It got the bulk of the lees and I've been stirring it once a month to see if it has an impact on mouthfeel, flavour, etc.
It was from the second container I tasted, so some of these observations will no doubt reflect that. Here's what I found:
The wine is a pale straw-gold colour and quite cloudy. It's extremely boozy on the nose, overpowering the nice bouquet of tropical fruit: mango, pineapple and banana. On the tip of the tongue it's boozy and slightly bitter, on the finish it's pretty hot and a little spicy. The mid-palate has some nice fruit-cocktail flavours, but it's still extremely dumb and one-dimensional. There's ample viscosity, giving the wine a lovely mouthfeel.
Having had no experience with making icewine before, I can't say whether this is par-for-the-course with a one month-old icewine. But my 2005 Carneros Pinot Noir was REALLY awful and entirely undrinkable until almost a month after bottling -- so who knows.
That said, the overwhelming booziness is cause for concern. Next year I will definitely try and keep my fermentation temperature down in the 12 C range to draw out the fermentation and let the yeast struggle some more. This should keep it from getting too boozy.