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Comparison

Ice cider vs ice wine

Is ice cider the same as ice wine, made with apples?

In short

It began that way. Ice cider was first made in Quebec around the end of the 1980s by winemakers borrowing the logic of ice wine: concentrate the fruit’s sugar by letting water freeze out of it, then ferment the concentrate slowly to a sweet, intense, high-acid drink.

The rules then went different ways. Ice wine is defined by the vine: in Ontario and Germany alike the grapes must freeze where they hang and be pressed while still frozen, and a winemaker who freezes juice instead has made something else. Ice cider allows that second route. Quebec’s rules accept cryoconcentration — freezing the juice of apples picked in autumn, stored whole and pressed in winter — beside cryoextraction, as long as the cold is natural.

The fruit makes the other difference. Apples hold to the tree less reliably than grapes and keep well off it, which is why so much ice cider is made from juice; grapes split and rot when picked and stored, which is why ice wine never could be.

The two things being compared

Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.

Where they differ

Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.

Ice cider and Ice wine compared. Neither column is the baseline the other is measured against.
DimensionIce ciderIce wine
Where the freezing happensThis is the defining legal difference, and it is why freeze-concentrated juice can make ice cider but never ice wine.On the tree, in fruit left outdoors after picking, or in pressed juice.On the vine only.
TemperatureNatural winter cold, under the Quebec specification; no fixed harvest temperature is stated here.Picked at an air temperature of −8 °C or lower and pressed at once in Ontario. German law sets no temperature, only that the grapes be frozen at harvest and pressing; growers usually wait for about −7 °C.
Concentration requiredAt least 30 °Brix before fermentation under Quebec’s cider regulation; about 32 °Brix under its protected name.An average of at least 35 °Brix in Ontario. In Germany each region sets the figure, from 110 °Oechsle — roughly 26 °Brix — upward.
AcidMalic acid, concentrated with the sugar from high-acid cold-climate apples.Tartaric and malic acid from the grape, concentrated the same way.
Fruit that can be usedApples that keep: much of the fruit is picked in autumn and stored whole, then pressed in winter so the cold can concentrate the juice.Grapes that survive on the vine into deep winter, which few varieties and fewer seasons allow.
Age of the traditionA generation: first made in Quebec around the end of the 1980s.Long established in Germany, and made in Canada from the 1970s and 1980s.

Notes under a dimension name qualify the whole row, not one column.

When Ice cider is the relevant one

The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.

When Ice wine is the relevant one

The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.

A misconception worth clearing up

This comparison exists partly because of the claim below, which is repeated often enough that most readers arrive holding it.

Commonly said

Ice cider is ice wine made from apples, so it must also be made from fruit frozen on the tree.

What is actually the case: Some is, and much is not. Quebec’s rules allow the juice of apples picked in autumn and kept whole to be pressed in winter and frozen by the cold instead, a route ice wine law forbids. What the two share is natural cold and a concentrated, slowly fermented must, not the moment the fruit froze.

Related comparisons

Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.

What people ask next

Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.

Where to go next

Sources

What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.