When it comes to Michigan wine prices, ice wine usually rises to the top.

Last year's trophy-winner for Best Dessert Wine, Brys Estate's 2007 "Dry Ice", weighs in at $70 for a 375ml half-bottle. Black Star Farms' 2007 "A Capella" Riesling Ice Wine -- which Barack Obama served at the White House earlier this year -- tips the scales at a whopping $92.50, according to the winery's website.

Price tags like these mean that most of us can only afford to pour ice wine on special occasions -- if at all.

Now, along comes Doug Welsch, proprietor of Fenn Valley Vineyards. Last Friday, Welsch released his 2008 "42" Ice Wine -- this year's Best Dessert Wine at the Michigan Wine Competition. (My necessarily-brief blind-tasting note from the trophy round judging consisted of a single word: "WOW!")

The winery price? $15 for 375ml. Not surprisingly, they're calling it "The Ice Wine Everyone Can Afford". 

"It's blowing out of here," Welsch told me. Tasting room manager Molli Young confirmed that she sold 20 cases over the weekend, just to walk-in tasters.

At that rate, it's a good thing they still have almost 900 cases left to go.

WTF? Yes, you read that right. While most wineries calculate ice wine inventories with an eye dropper, Fenn Valley bottled an eye-popping 918 cases of the trophy-winning "42", named for the latitude at which the grapes grew.

Welsch filled in some of the details. Lake Michigan Shore grower Dan Nitz supplied the grapes, which Fenn Valley employee Glen Greiffendorf picked in December*, when their sugar content hit 38% and nighttime temperatures dropped into the teens.

Carefully pressed while still frozen, each grape yielded just a couple of drops of ultra-flavorific, super-sweet juice. Welsch bought that raw juice and turned it into wine -- with 18.9% residual sugar to accompany its 10.4% alcohol.

But why so cheap for a trophy-winning ice wine? Welsch said some special circumstances let him halve his usual $30 to $35 ice wine price -- still low by Michigan standards.

The major reason: the cost of that raw juice. Because Nitz didn't have a buyer for his Vidal grapes, Welsch negotiated to buy more than 4000 gallons of  juice at the end of the season, paying less than half the normal price. Even after selling a majority of the finished wine to another winery, 900 cases remained -- enough to let Welsch drop the price in order to grease sales.

That's the opposite of typical ice wine marketing strategy, which seeks to maximize profits on each bottle of a very limited supply.

Welsch doesn't say those other ice wines are necessarily overpriced. He pointed out that grapes left on the vine to make ice wine may yield just 20% of the juice that the same vineyard would provide if they were picked during the normal harvest season.

But he does observe that ice wines made from Vidal always cost less to produce than those from Riesling -- and can therefore sell for less.

"It's about the base price of the grape," Welsch explained.  "Riesling is probably going to cost two-and-a-half or three times the price of Vidal."

Although he's also made Riesling ice wine in the past, Welsch doesn't feel the finished product reflects that varietal cost difference. "With ice wine, it's more about how it's made than what grape it's made from," he said.

Meanwhile, the quantities available are allowing Fenn Valley to pursue a second unheard-of strategy for Michigan ice wine: wholesaling some of those 900 cases to retailers. At last count, more 40 individual retailers statewide -- but no major chains -- had put "42" on their shelves.  Welsch expects them to sell it for $16 to $19 to savvy customers who understand just what they're buying.

Bottom line: right now, you and I have a unique opportunity to stock up on a trophy-winning ice wine at an unlikely-to-be-repeated fraction of the price of its peers.

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*Greiffendorf reserved a small portion of that Vidal juice for his own use; the  resulting home-made ice wine took the overall trophy as the single best amateur wine at this summer's Indy International Wine Competition.