question on freezing wine

[Cornbelt]

Ran accross an interesting idea used for hard cider. They let it freeze, and when it thawed out the alcohol thawed first leaving ice behind. Any of you winemakers tried it? How much stronger was it? Could it be applied for making port?

[greg916]

It's called jacking. Thats how you make applejack, sometimes called "essence of lockjaw". Pretty strong stuff. I somehow do not think it could be used to make wine, but I'm not sure on that.

[Fotto]

Found this in an old post on the web.

"FOR THOSE WHO WANT SOMETHING STRONGER, an old and effective way which was used to make "winter wine" or "apple jack" or whatever (depends on your starting material) by putting a tray of wine, cider, even unhopped ale out to freeze overnight. It wouldn't all freeze, but what did was water. Eventually the remaining liquid would stop freezing because the alcohol and other dissolved stuff would act as antifreeze for the remaining liquid water. Take the ice out of the tray, drain any liquid on it back, and the liquid left is much more concentrated alcohol. Could easily work up to around spirit concentration over a few nights, but as I understand it, it was pretty raw. Either needed aging or using in mixed drinks to be palatable, they said.
Don Armstrong July 12, 1999. "

[montveil]

Procedure I use is first make a wine/ cider with as high an alcolol content you can get--use a Champagne yeast.

line a metal bowl with a fine mesh cloth as close to the bottom as possible and fill bowl with cider, wine or whatever you have fermented
Place bowl in a freezer at about 0 F for 24 hours.
Remove the bowl from the freezer and gather the ends of the cloth and pick up and let drain for several minutes. The alcohol will remain liquid and drain back into the bowl while the water/ice will remain in the mesh to be removed and discarded.
I figure I can get the alcohol content over 100 proof(50%).
Don't expect this to be mellow and I don't know what aging will do, but it will knock your socks off

[Cornbelt]

Thanks for responding. Always wondered if anyone still did that. I've concentrated goat milk and cider like that, but not anything with alcohol. 100 proof, eh? That oughta about do it!