The changing weather is making life difficult for Montérégie ice wine producers, some of whom are giving up production of this iconic Quebec alcohol this winter.
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“We're not doing any this year, it's that simple. The temperature is too disgusting,” says François Pouliot, owner of the Verger Hemmingford ciderery, formerly La Face hidden de la pomme.
After the warm December weather, the frozen apple harvest will not take place in January as usual.
Photo agency QMI, Mario Beauregard
“When it's so mild, at a certain point in the tree the apples start to ferment, they're no longer good,” explains one who was one of the first producers of ice wine in Quebec more than 25 years ago.
Two methods
There are two ways to make this local Quebec alcohol. Cryoextraction involves pressing frozen apples harvested from the tree and cryoconcentration involves freezing the must in outdoor containers.
“Cryo-extraction is unthinkable this year. We want to press at a temperature of minus 10 or minus 12 degrees, but the fruit must have held up until then,” explains Hugo Poliquin, owner of the Cryo cider factory in Saint-Hilaire.
“Once the fruit is frozen, it is sensitive to thawing. He will fall,” adds the man, who is in his 17th season.
Photo agency QMI, Mario Beauregard
This year he also skipped cryoconcentration because the season got off to a bad start with the cold weather in the spring. The trees' blossoms froze, reducing his apple production by almost 60%.
François Pouliot fears that there will not be enough consecutive frost days in January to freeze the juice in the containers outside.
Hope
At Domaine Labranche in Saint-Isidore-de-la-Prairie we hope that the temperature is favorable for cryoconcentration.
“We let the must freeze in the tanks from December, but the actual concentration only takes place from mid-January,” explains owner Louis Desgroseillers.
However, he agrees that the weather is becoming less and less conducive to fruit freezing on the tree.
Hugo Poliquin even goes so far as to say that this method could become “folkloristic” given our increasingly mild winters.
“In recent years we have succeeded every fourth year, it has become very difficult,” he says.
He mentions that the future of production may lie in regions further north of the river, for example near the capital.
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