Originally published on February 13, 2008.
Finally brought in some ice wine! This is a major accomplish, mainly because now my husband can no longer ask me when I’m planning to get in some ice wine. The first day we were open, someone came in and asked if we had any ice wine.
“Open” is a bit of an overstatement given that we probably had about 10 bottles of wine on the shelf at the time, the cork floor had only been partially glued down, and I was using an old-school credit card swiper to run transactions. (Those swipers are called “knuckle busters”. It’s practically an official term – you ask your credit card guy to send you a manual card swiper and he looks at you with complete cluelessness. You ask for a knuckle buster, he knows just what you want.)
But we were “open” and someone comes in and asks about ice wine, which I say we’ll be getting, but not yet. My husband, who was helping out that day, looks at me as if he’s lost all faith in my ability to run a wine shop – because someone asked for ice wine and I don’t have it on the shelf within hours of opening the doors. Of course he doesn’t actually know what ice wine is, so I had to explain that first. Then I have to explain that it’s a fairly obscure item for people to be asking about and that’s why it wasn’t a top priority for my opening orders. I think he felt better when I told him Chamber Street Wines only had 1 in stock – and they have a lot more inventory than I do.
Then several weeks later, someone comes in and asks for ice wine. My husband just happens to be in the shop again. Several weeks later, same thing. Ice wine! Of all the things, ice wine!!
Finally, this week, I placed my first order with the distributor that sells Inniskillin, the ice wine I’ve been promising to buy all along. It’s bloody expensive stuff, but if you’re positive you want an ice wine, it’s a good bet. I’m sure it gets crazy ratings points, but regardless, it’s still good stuff. It’s from Canada – which is not the warmest part of the continent. They leave the grapes to hang on the vine long into the winter time. They freeze and then thaw, so the grapes wind up very dehydrated – and the remaining sugars, juices, and resulting flavors are highly concentrated. The wine is very very sweet, but because of the cold temperatures, the acidity is very high – which counteracts the sweetness and keeps the wine from being cloying. You wind up with a very sweet, luscious wine with flavors of lychee, peach nectar, honey, and mango. $84.99 for a 375ml (a half bottle) – which is enough for even a fair size dinner party as it’s so very rich that just a little dab will do.
Anyhow, my husband’s faith in my ability to run this business has been fully restored – all it took was a little ice wine.