Focus on little-known wines

Do you know the ice wines? or the yellow wine?It sounds vaguely familiar... Today we have decided to discuss with you the subject of little-known wines that we don't hear much about and that deserve to be brought out into the open!

Ice wine

An ice wine is a wine produced from grapes harvested and pressed frozen, an extremely rare wine because the temperature for berry harvesting must be at least -6°, and is optimal from -13°.The grapes must not be thawed before pressing in order to extract only the syrup, the sweetest juice of the berry, the rest of the liquid (less sweet) must remain frozen.The harvest is therefore done before dawn at -13°... not ideal if this is your first harvest!

The countries that have adopted this tradition of ice wine are mainly Canada, Germany, Austria and Slovenia, whose extreme conditions allow the harvesting of the precious nectar. Alsace also produces some, but in small quantities, and the main grape varieties used are Riesling, Chardonnays and Cabernet Franc.

The mutated wines

Mutated wines are wines that have undergone "mutage". What is mutage? It is a technique developed in the 13th century, which consists of harvesting red or white grapes, often late in the season, and then harvesting the grapes again.during fermentation, adding neutral alcohols in order to keep the residual sugars and increase the alcoholic strength present in the wines (about 15% to 18%).Its aim was to facilitate the conservation of the wines during transport.

There are different types of mutations in the wine which differ according to the stage of fermentation where the alcohol is added:

• If the alcohol is added before the alcoholic fermentation, it will then be calledliqueur winesand the added alcohols must be produced in the same region as the grapes harvested for the production of the mutated wine.
• If alcohol is added during alcoholic fermentation, it will be a natural sweet wine. In this case, a neutral alcohol will be used for this stage.
• If the alcohol is added when the alcoholic fermentation is complete, we will then speak of vintaged wines. The aim of this system is to increase the alcoholic strength present in the wine.

Yellow wine

Yellow wine is a white wine made from the Savagnin grape variety alone, which must be kept for at least 6 years and 3 months after the alcoholic fermentation process.Small anecdote, the yellow wine is bottled in special 62cl bottles called "Clavelin" because during its maturing, the yellow wine is made without topping up (the winemaker does not constantly add wine to counter the evaporation of the wine).And so, in 6 years and 3 months, for a full barrel of 100 litres, there will be 62 litres of wine left: That is 62 cl for a 1 litre bottle.

This maturing without topping up has another consequence: the appearance during ageing of a veil of yeast on the surface, preserving it from oxidation and depriving it of contact with the ambient air. It is this veil of yeast that gives the yellow wine such a prestigious and complex taste.These wines have the particularity of having very long cellaring.Even if other winegrowers use the same maturing process under different appellations, only the Jura, of which the winegrowers have made it their speciality, has the authorization to benefit from the AOC vin jaune.

Tiphaine (Les Grappes)