Awhile ago I posted a thread called, WHAT A THRILL!! ,which was a TN of my first encounter with Canadian "icewine" and incidently an "icewine" from Washington as well. Within the thread I had a reply from Mark Willstatter stating in part, ..."I know for a fact at least one California winemaker had his "icewine" label rejected in the early 80's - Randall Graham at Bonny Doon wanted to use that term for his freezer-made Muscat icewine and ended up settling for "Vin d'Glaciere" instead, a label I believe Bonny Doon still uses..."
I thought I'd check out this Bonny Doon stuff so I bought a half-bottle of their-
2005 Muscat Vin de Glaciere
11%alc. $18
It IS produced in the, "picked-pressed-THEN-frozen", method.
I don't know if they use late harvest grapes or if they just use "normal" (whatever that means) ripeness level grapes.
Anyway, getting to the TN--
I thought it was really good stuff! Very aromatic nose; alot of florals and fruit. The palate was distinctively Muscat with it's spiced apple, light citrus and pineapple notes; very sweet but not cloying, great acidity. Finished better than I thought, it being 11% and all, it didn't have any perceivably unpleasant alc. burn. Compared to other dessert wines out there -- i.e. icewine (Canadian, German), sauternes etc., this is a great bang for the buck! I can definitely see myself upping my dessert wine drinking frequency with a value like this. I paired it with a chocolate fondue that a friend of mine made the other night that included a smorgasboard of dipping items (fruits, pretzels, cubed cake pieces etc.)
and it was tremendous in more ways than one (the other one being my "tremendous" midsection "en-bulgement" afterward).
Well, 'nuf said, gotta hit the gym.
Later, Aaron.