With most of North America shivering through a cold snap, growers in British Columbia, Michigan and Ontario reported excellent conditions for an early 2016 ice wine harvest. The harvest began Dec. 6 in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, where temperatures dropped to 17.6° F and stayed there for three days. Conditions enabled picking to resume a few days later, on Dec. 12 in the Okanagan and in the Similkameen valleys, according to the British Columbia Wine Institute. The icy temperatures also came early in Ontario, where growers started picking around Dec. 19, when temperatures plunged to around 9° F. Early this week, two wineries located in Michigan’s Old Mission Peninsula also saw sufficient cold weather to harvest grapes for ice wine. Mark B. Johnson, winemaker and vice president of Chateau Chantal, which makes around 25,000 cases per year in Traverse City, Mich., told Wines & Vines that he and his team started picking Dec. 16 but decided to hold off on pulling everything off the vine as the grapes felt a little too soft. His patience was rewarded when on Dec. 19 temperatures fell to around 10° F, and the berries froze quite a bit harder.

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