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These are traditional throughout most of Italy and the South of France -they don't any real oak taste or smell, unlike oak chips or wands, etc.

There's definitely a split in Italy over the use of new barriques -it was big in the 90's and now they tend to be reserved for export wines to the US, since the sense in Italy is that Americans like big oak and won't tolerate overt acidity well. When I was in Allba a few years ago there was...

Can you say what you mean by 'finicky' -that's pretty vague. In my experience (I started using D47 in 1998) I've never had any problems with it (unlike Epernay 2, which is very prone to sticking, if that's what you mean by finicky.

I did a side by side comparison of these two yeasts in three different wines (Muscat Blanc, Roussanne and Viognier). What I found was 1) body was dramatically better for D47 vs QA23 -QA23 seemed coarse in the mouth and thinner. This was much les of a factor for Viognier since it has a big body...

We adjusted tartaric after a 24 hour cold soak for those wines with high pH. Mourvedre, Zin, Tempranillo and Muscat were adjusted to 6.5g/l tartaric. Viognier, Barbera, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Roussanne were not adjusted.

This is definitely caused by a microorganism living on the fruit that is active in parallel with the yeast you added. If you had sulfured the fruit before beginning fermentation you would have likely avoided this, but not necessarily. All may not be lost, though. In 2021 I got both cinsaut and...

There's no need to add oak unless you actually want the taste/smell. Most Italian wines these days are not "flavored" with oak, though ten years ago or so you would encounter this as part of the fad for the "International/Robert Parker" style. It's up to you of course, but sometimes I get the...

I'm really interested in this too, since where I am water is scarce. I have a nice air compressor, and a Speidel bladder press designed for water. BTW, I'm looking for a larger press, I have the 90 liter now and I'm looking for something in the 300 liter range. Anyone know of any air bladder...

I think they are like a tea bag -it depends on how long you soaked them the first time and how much flavoring got sucked out of them. You get less the second use. The risk is that now they are soaked with wine so you will either need to move them directly into another batch or find a way of...

I agree with everyone else -for grapes from CA and likely central valley, these are unbelievably low, especially since they are low across all the varietals and post-fermentation. These are even low for cold climate grapes at this stage. Did you check the pH when you first got the grapes? I find...

Among the commercial winemakers I know there is currently a big push not to use oak as a flavor, which was common in the 90's and early 2000's. The reason is, as many people have pointed out, it's not really traditional and, further, it really does flavor a wine in a way that interferes with...

Update: I ended up adding tartaric in multiple increments, starting with 2g/l. To get the pH to 3.7 it required 4 g/l total. This should have raised the TA to around .9. Strange thing is that in tasting the post-fermentation wine it does not taste acidic at all, in fact less than other wines...

I experienced a rosé fail this year too. I did a saignée of some Cinsault to try and concentrate things more on the red wine side. I went to rack the "rosé" when it was done fermenting and it was already essentially a white wine -oh well... The Cinsault "red" is looking a lot like a rosé after...

Hmmm, well the problem is that I can't simply add tartaric to get to an acceptable pH without radically changing the wine -it would have to be adjusted to around 12 g/l acid. I have made reds with 12g/l (Baco Noir) but that was a fact of nature you have to deal with with Baco in a cool climate...

Hi all, I wanted to seek advice since this is a real outlier for me. I just got a bin of Mourvedre from a reputable vineyard/winery in Amador. It's part of the same harvest they use. The grape hung much longer than pretty much anything else I got this year, and the farmer said he was waiting for...

Don't you find that adding tartaric that late in the process (at bottling) adds a weird sharpness to the taste or chemical smell to the wine? Is the idea that this might mellow or disappear during extended bottle aging? What is the disadvantage of adjusting the TA right before and right after...

Boeuf Bourguignon tonight!

I would test this again. It's definitely not impossible but weird for Cab. I have seen hybrids and some Italian white grapes (Fiano is one) show low acid and low pH, but not Cab (in my experience in CA and NY grapes)

I have seen this "pH rise" happen myself, not infrequently. Often, it is not caused by fermentation per se, but by the grapes themselves after crush. If you crush your reds and check the brix/pH right after crush you will get a lower brix and lower pH than you will if you let them sit over night...

Amador grapes are fantastic, I especially love the Fiddletown area. It has the most convoluted geography of any wine region I've seen. El Dorado is the place where I've found the most interesting varietals -the Tannat, Falaghina, etc. The guy I'm getting Falaghina from (picking it up in an...