Ice Gold
Ice Gold is my most complex wine to date! Technically speaking, it's an ice cider but I hate splitting hairs and prefer to call it an ice apple wine. It's easier to understand, especially when there are maniacs out there that actually put ice in their (unfermented) cider. Yikes.
This concoction began life as a few hundred hand-picked wild apples growing around our woods and the surrounding countryside. The apples were ground up in a mill before being pressed into five gallons of delicious fresh cider. I then threw this bounty straight into the freezer until rock hard. This next step is a little confusing - I thawed it back out again, taking only the juiciest drippings that contained the most sugar and flavor. About a gallon of this hyper-concentrated apple cider was then fermented very slowly over a period of months until the finished product was achieved. Talk about a labor of love.
The results, however, were worth it. Ice Gold is extremely sweet, as one would expect for an ice wine. The apple flavor hits you in the face like a bushel of apples would, and the 11% alcohol is nowhere to be found under all that flavor and sugar. I only plan to break this one out for special celebrations as it is very rare.
