The icy front invaded our area last night, with snow falling right along with the temperatures in many areas of the state. Fall is my favorite time of year, but early winter weather finds its way into late Fall many years. Still, there are reasons to be grateful for these frigid temperatures. Like this one in ypsi~dixit's post:

IT'S A PEA-SOUP NIGHT with snow on the way, so Y. is making some split pea soup. I have some nice sausage to put in there and a bay leaf or two. I got to read some of my Taoism book en route to work and on the way home. It was a good reminder of the satisfaction to be taken from simple things like a pot of pea soup, as opposed to striving after useless and illusory things.

These colder temperatures also serve to prepare grapes for ice wine. If you've never tasted ice wine, you should. Kitchen Chick describes it as "sweet seduction in a bottle." I couldn't agree more. She educates her readers in this Wine Blogging Wednesday post:

Icewine (or Eiswein in Germany) is a late-harvest wine made from picking frozen grapes and pressing them before they thaw. To prevent premature thawing, the vineyards must pick the grapes at night or at latest in the earliest dawn hours (before the sun can have a chance at warming them), and all the grapes must be pressed within a few hours of being picked.

With so much water locked up in the ice, the resulting juice makes for a concentrated rich wine that is very high in sugar but also balanced with high acidity. It's most commonly made from Vidal and Riesling grapes and a few other white grapes, but you can also find red icewines made from Cabernet Franc grapes.

Read IT'S A PEA-SOUP NIGHT as well as today's post THE SNOW CAME DOWN THICK AND FAST by ypsi~dixit
Also read WBW #27: Icy Desserts by Kitchen Chick SEE COMMENTS