Guy:
If you want to make an ice wine from a kit...buy an ice wine kit. There are some good ones out there. So far, I prefer Vineco's Ken Ridge Clbuttic white ice wine. However, the clear winner at the recent Winemaker awards was a Vidal Ice wine from Spagnols. I have not tried it.
You can, however, turn the Island Mist kit into a DESSERT WINE, similar to an ice wine. I have not done this with Island Mist, but I have done it with Niagara Mist, and things should work the same.
Racking and Aging clarification pleaseDave, Those are guidelines, fruit wine has a mind of it's own and each will behave differently. For the most part, once wine is fully fermented which is...
I made the base as a less than 11 litre batch so that I could use a 3 gallon-11 litre carboy. Not certain what exact size, but would guess about 10 litres. Then made it as per usual. Used all the additives, and all of the F-pack.
The first time I used one package of yeast (EC-1118) and fermentation was very slow. The second time I added a second package and it seemed faster.
The customer really likes the Peach Chardonnay dessert wine, and has said that she will probably do another in the future. I found the Strawberry White Zin that we did for ourselves a bit strong in the strawberry flavour. Would probably use 2-3 to 3-4 of the F pack if there is a next time. (My wife has recently found out that she is diabetic, so we'll have to avoid neat stuff like ice & dessert wines. Not that we drank a lot of it.)
Steve
