Not many Washington state wineries take on the huge effort to make ice wine, but during the recent cold snap, the ones that do brought in their frozen harvest and ran the presses. Ice wine is a very sweet dessert wine, concocted from the super concentrated sugars and acids that remain unfrozen when the water in grapes turns to ice. First made in Germany, eiswein production began in Canada in the 1980s and is now spreading to other suitable climates. Ohio wineries have discovered that their long autumns and late November freezes are ideal. A few wineries bucked standards and froze harvested grapes in freezers instead, but the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has ruled that only wine made from grapes frozen on the vine may be labeled “ice wine.” Demand for this sweet concoction is high and supplies are low enough to fetch excellent profits for the winemakers who have to tough out freezing overnight harvests and the scary experience of running the equivalent of ice cubes through their valuable grape presses.