You may have had wine ice cream before, but what you might not know is a little ice cream shop in Central NY had to fight so that you could! In fact, to my knowledge, this is the only place that makes wine ice cream. It gets shipped across the globe! I had had it before, but recently had the chance to go visit the ice cream parlor in person. It’s not all that special looking, and it does close pretty early, but it’s worth it.
The ice cream that the freeze and ship tastes the same as the ice cream in the shop, but for whatever reason the texture changes. When you get the ice cream straight from their shop it’s creamier and as a bonus you can get it in a waffle-cone bowl. I sampled a few of the flavors before settling on the chocolate cabernet, but what I found truly interesting was that the ice cream shop had to fight the state of NY in order to keep making and selling this sweet treat.
Each flavor of wine contains around 5% wine, which caused some issues about the legality of the dessert. Since it could technically be melted down and consumed as a liquid it may be considered liquor. If you’re unfamiliar in NY, where this ice cream shop is located, liquor selling is done with a specific set of laws. In fact, our grocery stores can’t even sell liquor!
It took 2 years for the ice cream shop to develop the first of their flavors so there was no way they were going to let legislators take it away without a fight. After a year of writing to representatives and other legal hurdles Mercer’s Law was pasted. A small win for the local agricultural businesses of NY.