FAIRPORT, N.Y. — Temperatures hovered around 15 degrees in the Rochester region Thursday; frigid for some, but perfect for others, like ice wine makers.

Workers at Casa Larga Wearing donned their warmest coats, boots, hats and gloves to start harvesting the frozen grapes that will become the vineyard's signature ice wine.

Every year, the vineyard sets aside a few rows of Vidal grapes and lets them hang on the vines until winter. Those grapes are plucked and then pressed frozen.

"When you run it through the press we separate liquids and solids," said winemaker Matt Cassavaugh. "If the water is frozen, it's a ice cube. It gets left behind with the skins. What that does is concentrate the juice. It get higher sugar, a more aromatic juice."

Of course only a few regions in the world can produce ice wine and the Finger Lakes is one of them. Casa Larga will celebrate that fact with a festival in February.

"We're able to ship to 39 states now and one of the top two items that we ship around the country is ice wine because it is so unique and has so many followers," said Andrea Colaruotolo-O'Neill, marketing director. "There are so many different types of ice wines; we do ours in the traditional method."

It costs about $60 for a bottle of Casa Larga ice wine, a bottle, that for so many, means so much about our region.

"It's one of the reasons we put so much effort and thought and care into making the ice wines we do, because we think it represents one of the things that's unique and great about the Finger Lakes wine region as a whole," said Cassavaugh. "Napa, it doesn't get to 15 degrees so they don't have the opportunity to do this."