The Producer: Jens Skovgaard @ Cold Hand Winery

I met Jens Skovgaard the first time last summer at Food Festival in Aarhus. Jens was busy serving wine and talking to potential customers. The energy level was so high that all attention was drawn to him. Jens was so busy that I never got to talk to him in-depth about his production. Visiting Cold Hand Winery was therefore obvious, and I did so on my Jutland-drive some weeks ago.

It all started with a dream for making ice cider (frozen-thawed-fermented apple must) in Denmark. Never ever seen before here in this country. He manages and since then the portfolio has expanded also to include sparkling apple wines, sparkling strawberry wine, sparkling raspberry wine, distilled spirits, fortified wines, and much more. Cold Hand Winery is by far the most innovative winery in Denmark.

The day I visited Jens he prepared digorging his pine wine (sparkling apple wine infused with pine).

I was there because of my interest in sparkling apple wine. Jens’ approach is very much similar to the way of making Champagne. However, the main difference is that Jens freeze-concentrate the must to enhance the sugar and acid concentration. The must is then fermented to complete dryness, secondary fermented in bottle with yeast, sugar and nutrients, disgorged and added dosage. And you can guess that the dosage is not ordinary. Jens experiment with dosages made from must of darker berries.

To get it all going Jens teamed up with Flemming one of Denmark’s biggest apple growers. In total 47 hectares of apples!

Stay updated on the winery. They seem to come up with new and exciting brews!