# Pink Pinot Grigio



## tomcat (Oct 3, 2009)

Hello all, 

A few weeks ago I posted a question about my Pinot Grigio being pink in color. Well I just racked the wine today for the first time and the PG is still pink and cloudy. It looks somewhat like pink lemonade and pink grapefruit juice??? I tasted a little and it is not awful, however, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of good taste yet. 

I used 6 gallons of Pinot Grigio juice from California. I brought the juice and it was refrigerated. I let the juice warm up in my basement a couple of days. I pitched a good active yeast culture and when I pitched yeast I noticed the juice was pink then. I posted the question on this web site back then, however didn’t get any explanation as to what might have happened. 

Do you suppose that there is a bacterial fermentation or oxidation or something else perhaps? Has this happened to anyone else? Any help is appreciated.


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## cpfan (Oct 3, 2009)

I'm no expert of juices, but have to wonder if the juice sat on the grapes a little too long and picked up some extra colour. I think that bad juice, usually xoxdized, is brownish not pinkish.

Steve


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## Wade E (Oct 3, 2009)

Seeing as how these are white grapes it makes me think they didnt clean the crusher or press or some red grapes got into the mix by accident when pressing, shouldnt be any big deal other then color but I hope you werent planning on entering this wine into a competition as that would be 1 strike against it. The taste shouldnt be thrown off that much.


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## cpfan (Oct 3, 2009)

From wiki (bold text from me)....



> Pinot gris is a white wine grape variety of the species Vitis vinifera. Thought to be a mutant clone of the Pinot noir grape, it normally has a grayish-blue fruit, accounting for its name ("gris" meaning "grey" in French) but the grape can have a brownish pink to black and even white appearance. The word "Pinot", which means "pinecone" in French, could have been given to it because the grapes grow in small pinecone-shaped clusters. *The wines produced from this grape also vary in colour from a deep golden yellow to copper and even a light shade of pink.* The clone of Pinot gris grown in Italy is known as Pinot grigio.


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## donnaclif (Oct 7, 2009)

In industrial applications if wineries press the grapes too much or If a winery gets too greedy the tint of the wine can certainly turn pinkish. So some wineries will just break the skins of the grapes and let the free run juice run. and they end up with pinkish pinot grigio, then they have to use a fining agent to strip out the color. Problem is, the fining agent takes the color, but also something else that you don't want it to take. So it ends up being a lackluster wine.
I know coz i have been successfull in collecting lot of Pinot Grigio in my database
http://www.vivino.com/grapes/pinot-grigio/


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## cpfan (Oct 7, 2009)

Some of the above comments are treating 'pink pinot grigio' as if it's a fault (Donna, Wade). Did any of you search for 'pink pinot grigio'? Some wineries sell it. Here's one example with a neat label...

http://www.frederickwildman.com/wildmansite/wmphp/archivepress.php3?type=1&item=47797

Steve


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