Via Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP
Team Vinicola Perico, Vinicola Vineyards in Santa Catarina, Brazil
Our friends at the METSUL reports that for the first time ever in Brazil icewine has been produced in this unusually cold June in Southern Brazil. This is a release on the Vinicolo Vineyard website. The following is a rough web based translation from Portuguese to English. The original Portuguese story is here.
With pleasure we inform that the Perico team yesterday registered in its vineyards, located in the farm Boy God, District of the Perico in Joaquin – Santa Catarina, a phenomenon of the nature, the most waited of this time: the ice wine. The temperatures had fallen well below-freezing and the thermometers had marked – 7.5 C. A dream if became reality: the harvest of the grapes congealed for this so wonderful act of the nature.
With this, the Vinicola Perico, will be first ever vineyard in Brazil to produce ICEWINE (Wine of the Ice), a natural licoroso wine, with raised amount of residual sugar of the proper grape.
The process of production of the Icewine, consists of mature grapes and extreme cold at-6 C, in this condition, the water that if find in the interior of the berries of the grapes congeal and the ice separates the rich juice in sugar. When the grapes are just right, they’re carefully picked by hand. Grapes in this condition have a very low yield – often an entire vine only makes a single bottle. That’s why ice wine can be so expensive and is often sold in half-bottles only … but it’s worth it! After this long harvest process, the grapes go through weeks of fermentation, followed by a few months of barrel aging in new barrels of French oak, Allier forest. The wine ends up a golden color, or a deep, rich amber. It has a very sweet (of course) taste. After vinificado we will have the pleasure to present this great BRAZILIAN only ICEWINE, which happens in Austria, Germany, north of Italy and Canada. See photos of our vineyard to the dawn, before and after the sun rose. More photos on home page.. More photos on home page.
We have posted stories on how this cold spring has caused agricultural problems in many locations worldwide. See this post . See David Archibald’s post originally on Icecap in which he forecasted these agricultural issues reposted with comments on Watts Up With That here. See Bloomberg post on spring wheat concerns in Canada due to a very cold May. See more on Spring in Canada here
Despite all these anecdotal evidences of global cooling, NOAA announced May 2009 was the 4th warmest in 130 years of record keeping (and manipulation) with an anomaly of +0.53C just a week after the University of Alabama using the NASA MSU satellite data assessed the global anomaly at just +0.043C, making it the 15th coldest in 31 years. Anthony and I will surely have more to say on this unlikely divergence soon.
I think I will buy a bottle. I will enjoy it while celebrating the naming of the Eddy Minimum . . . if I can safely store it long enough.
I’m guessing it’ll be pretty evident in 5 years and maybe named in 10 or 15.
On the other hand; At that point, a bottle of Brazillian Icewine might not seem that rare.
I have had some ice wine. You have to serve it cold and not room temperature. But it is very good. It is not bitter. More akin to grape juice. But it doesn’t have the additives of desert wines to get its sweet taste.
Frozen grapes need to be picked right away. You never leave grapes on the vine after a hard frost in hopes that somehow the vine canes will force more sugar into the grapes. And sugar production in the leaves is stopped “cold” so to speak. You cannot force more sugar from a frosted vine into a grape. You get what you get from the grape when the frost hits. You can’t even let the weather warm up first before you pick. If you do, fermentation sets in right away and destroys the entire thing. Besides, wasps and yellow jackets descend on the fermenting grapes and get VERY angry when someone comes along and calls “last round”. Which is why you never pick pears off the ground. Once there, they turn into bars and pubs for the locals. And the locals don’t take kindly to teetotalers drying up their town.
“Ice” any drink usually means more alcohol. Getting smashed doesn’t need anything as fancy as wine. Nor as expensive. “Late Harvest” is another matter totally. I have many bottles of mighty fine wine (both in season and late harvest) in my cellar. With no lock on the door as I would certainly lose it. (sorry, Pam)
Of course “natural” anything is better than man-made, and you can charge more for it. (other than climate change) I’m just a bigoted Yank, I guess, but I’ll match the best from the Left Coast with any wine in the world. Now, where did I leave the screwpull …
NOAA announced May 2009 was the 4th warmest in 130 years
With seeing the reports of cold from all over the world, both in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, this from the NOAA sends up a strong red flag.
Elizabeth (08:51:32) :
How does NOAA get away with such blatant misrepresentation?
How is the public so easily duped?
The average person can sense when a hand is being overplayed. People feel the cooler weather and see reports of cold from around the world and then if they see this from the NOAA they see overplay.
What I’m wondering is why the NOAA is so slow to see that the public will sense this overplay? So the real question is why has the NOAA been so easily duped?
I think I know where the NOAA gets its warm global temp from. They are using their predicted highs and lows. After all, they do say that they understand and explain weather. So why wait for the observed highs and lows?
It is similar to frozen beer, or “natty ice”, for those of you who enlisted in a college gentleman’s society.
I rather agree with Pamela that icewine is a marketing ploy to sell a fortune a not specially good wine with highly variable quality. The Brazilians would better have some experienced North Est (Alsace) French oenologists flewn to their vineyard to get something drinkable from their frosting grapes.
Here in Bordeaux, growers spend a fortune to prevent frost, either by installing burners or huge blowers or warm water sprayers. Some Grand Cru Classé in the Medoc or Saint Emilion even hire helicopters on exceptional circumstances to blow over their vines to save ward off frost. As an anecdote, season 2008 in the region has been catastrophic, with a production slashed by about 50%. Causes: too cold, to rainy, to many hailstorms. Climate change, you named it !
Quoting: Jimmy Haigh (08:01:38) :
“How about sending a bottle each to Gore, Hansen and Schmidt?”
Commenting:
Nah. Send ’em each a hot 3.2 beer.
Being somewhat of a wine connoisseur myself, I prefer Mogen David 20 20… however it DOES fall off the palate just a wee bit too quickly.
NOAA
VISION
An informed society that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions
(The social and economic decisions of late seem less than brilliant)
MISSION
To understand and predict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation’s economic, social, and environmental needs
(Uhhhh, our economic, social and environmental needs are not really being understood)
NOAA CORE VALUES
People, Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork, and Ingenuity
Science, Service, and Stewardship
(Probably should concentrate more on the integrity part and less on the ingenuity part)
[snip]
But that is just weather.
On the question of being duped, there is some good background info.
The human systems are redundant in various ways. We have 2
eyes, but in each eye we also have 2 vision systems — color and
black&white.
The circadian clock in the brain is connected to, but not the same
as the one in the gut. The gut has its own nervous system (the
enteric system) which is not the same one as in the brain.
The brain itself has redundant systems. The important one in this
case is well illustrated by the dual memory systems. The fast-memory
systems and slow-memory systems are linked, but not the same.
Some people can be duped quickly. Some are not very susceptible
to fast dupe.
There are connections to language. Williams Syndrome and Einstein
Syndrome are opposite ends of the spectrum. Children with Williams
are wonderful fluent speakers and pick up language quickly. But
they cannot learn to add, multiply or tie shoes. Einstein did not speak
until he was 8 years old.
Certain people suck up faddish ideas and are duped quickly. They
speak well and convince like-minded people in government. But they
cannot reason, make things, fix things, or let go of an idea that is
disproved.
I found this comment from the BBC:
Ice wine in tropical Brasil – time to apologize
Ice wine harvest at -7.5°, climate change appears to be unstoppable.
We asked climate scientist Anthony Watts about his opinion.
BBC: “Mr. Watts, how do you weigh the importance of recent news about ice wine harvest in Brasil, isn’t it just as remarkable as Vinking agriculture in Greenland or the the opening of the North-West Passage ?”
Watts: “Well, using the well tempered language of peer reviewed climate science, I would say that the situation is much worse than expected. This is unprecedented and happening for the first time in human history”.
The IPCC also commented and it’s head scientist declared that things now happen exactly as predicted.
“Our computer models told us that climate change is imminent and changing the shape of the world as we know it.
While the rich in the developped world can easily move to their second homes in Tuscany and the Carribean, it will be the poor who suffer most.
These countries have to deal with massive population growth, have to develop nuclear weapons for security and now on top of that deal with altering shorelines and reduced harvests.”
Al Gore commented that “our policy was obviously right from the beginning. Now everybody can see that we need every additional Watt produced by solar and wind power. This will produce a lot of jobs in China and CO2 trading will create huge prosperity at Wallstreet.”
G. Schmidt at internet portal realclimate.com was not available for a comment, because his website was put into maintenance.
While James Hansen was also unavailable due to a snow storm at Sydney airport after witnessing in a criminal case against Austrailian climate activists,
Prof. Mann was able to comment.
During a road show for his private climate science software he declared:
“We are very proud to have been able to predict this. Our software is extremely robust and we always said, sign of temperature data doesn’t matter.
I think it is time for some self declared climate scientists and bloggers to apolgize.”
“WestHoustonGeo (15:50:55) :
Nah. Send ‘em each a hot 3.2 beer.”
Is that an ounce of beer, then ounce of milk, then ounce of beer, ounce of milk, beer, milk, beer, milk, and so on, until about 20 oz of each?
Please do not attempt that at home–or anywhere else.
“Einstein did not speak until he was 8 years old.”
An interesting bit of apocrypha…
The first words that Einstein spoke were, “The beans are too salty.” His mother, crying with joy, asked, why have you not spoken before?” Whereupon Einstein replied, “Up until now, everything was OK.”
Is this really that uncommon there? When I was last in Curitiba (North of Santa Catarina) I nearly froze to death because I thought I would not need anything more than jeans and a sweater for the worst of a Brazilian winter. Yeah, it can get cold in Brazil.
> Pamela Gray (12:35:53) :
> By the way, if you are a home wine maker, you can do the same
> thing. Freeze the grapes first (any grapes cuz it don’t matter).
> They’ll be much sweeter.
Canada’s ice wine industry has found itself in a similar situation to the French champagne industry. Somebody (probably an MBA) figured out that you could simply inject CO2 into wine, just like into soft drinks, and voila, instant Champagne at a fraction of the price. The vintners of the Champagne district lobbied hard and now only “naturally produced” champagne is allowed to be labelled as “champagne”. The term “sparkling wine” is used for the artificial stuff.
Similarly, “natural ice wine” producers are lobbyied to only allow the “naturally produced” stuff to be labelled as “ice wine”.
Could it be, that São Joaquim (at 1.353 m above sea level) and its districts is simply cold to begin with?
Sorry, this post looks much like the good old The-Romans-grew-grapes-in-England fallacy to me.
@ur momisugly Anthony:
Why you should not rely on automated translations
The English translations omits part of the original text and seriously distorts key parts.
I’ve looked at the original text and translated it with the aid of google language tools. Here are the first two paragraphs in my translation. The key parts are highlighted:
Even if you do not trust my translation, the second paragraph clearly shows, that icewine is “Vinho do Gelo”, while in the first paragraph the phenomenon is “gelo”, i.e. “frost”.
To summarize:
– The first “ice wine” in the Joe D’Aleo translation should read “frost”!
– The frost is expected in this location, not a surprise!
– The vineyard is at 1300 m above sea level. Looks like D’Aleo didn’t bother to check why his translation dropped the phrase containing “1300”.
The Brazilian icewine is not “anecdotal evidences of global cooling”. An update of the original post is in order, IMHO.
The city of Sao Joaquim, the coldest in Brazil, is experiencing its coldest month of June since 1963. I said 1963 !!!! Frost and icing is not uncommon in this particular area of Brazil, but the sustained cold in this month is anything but usual. And forecast models are already indicating an impressive cold snap in South America for the last week of the month, what will probably garantee the coldes June in the region in the last 46 years. By the way, GELO is ICE and GEADA is frost in Portuguese.
Reply: Eu estava esperando que alguém do Brasil iria comentar. ~ charles the moderator
The frost was predicted by the weather guy. And let’s call it a freeze, not a frost. It was simply a predicted event that caused the vineyard to prepare to harvest for icewine. It does NOT happen every year. Most vineyards handle frosts with mechanized systems that turn on when the temp drops below a certain level. Frosts can be handled. Freezes not so much. So you produce icewine. You can’t harvest before the predicted freeze because there is not enough sugar in the grape to produce anything other than vinegar. So if a freeze is predicted, everything is geared up for icewine.
The latest congressional report out Tuesday is scary in that it predicts continued warming and should be used for agricultural planning, among other things. WRONG! If cooling continues, those that depended on this predicted warming will be producing either vinegar or icewine in the northern hemisphere vineyards at the 45th parallel and higher. And will lose their collective shirts. They should be hedging their bets by taking some of those vineyards out of production and planting freeze hardy crops.
The GWA’s and the tax and cap scheme will harm the food industry more than all the religious jihad idiots could with one dirty bomb. We will have just out of college gullible farmers planting warm weather crops that will freeze kill before harvest. Our own political leaders are sending us to hell in a handbasket (with no food in it either) with the pending CO2 reduction bill. Let’s hope the Senate has some sense knocked into it. Gawd, I hate being a registered Democrat.
Thank you for the correction, my German mother tongue struck, as in German “Eiswein” is harvested during “Frost”. It still is not D’Aleo’s distorting “icewine” in the first paragraph.
OK, this is new information, nothing to be gleaned from the original post. Thanks.
Bluegrue
In defense of D’Aleo, the press release announces that it was the first production of ICEWINE ever in Brazil. So, the information posted at ICECAP is correct and according to the content ofn the release. ICECAP also mentions that is a unuasually cold June in the regional. After the month’s end there will be a report on D’Aleo’s website on the records and milestones of this very cold June down here in this part of South America.