Aromella acid conundrum

RonObvious · Oct 30, 2017

First time working with Aromella and I'm still in the learning phase of winemaking, so I have an acid question. I bought 6 gallons of Aromella juice, which smelled and tasted awesome, but came in with a TA of 1.42. My goal was to bring it to 0.9 by adding 78 grams of CaCO3 using the double-salt method (remove about 2.2 gallons, add all 78 grams, stir vigorously, settle, blend back with the rest of the juice). That's when I discovered that I didn't have as much CaCO3 as I thought I had! D'oh!

So I added what I had (32 grams) to about 1 gallon of juice, stirred, settled, added back to the rest. Made a yeast starter (Cotes des Blancs) and let it do its thing, knowing that I had added less than half of the required CaCO3 and that I would have to fix it later.

So here we are about 3 weeks later and the chickens have come home to roost. It fermented nice and slow at about 62 degrees. The aroma and flavors are amazing (strong pineapple, citrus, pear, apricot), but it does indeed taste acidic. A bit like drinking perfumed lemon water.

Now, after primary, the TA is about 1.2 but the pH is 3.6. The question is what to do next? For the moment I just racked it and topped it off with distilled water, but I'm sure it's going to still be acidic next time I check it.

A few questions:

1) Has anyone worked with Aromella before? Is high TA *and* somewhat high pH common? How do I bring the TA down without further raising the pH?

2) It should be pretty cold in my garage by the next time it has to be racked. Should I add the remaining CaCO3 (using double salt technique) and then cold stabilize it and hope for the best?

3) Is Aromella a good candidate for MLF? And if so, should MLF be done before or after cold stabilization?

Any advice on acid management is appreciated!

salcoco · Oct 30, 2017

if your garage is fairly cold I would just wait and see if some acid precipitates out, via cold stabilization. again taste is paramount not numbers. suggest after a couple of month if wine is till acidic take a sample and add some sugar syrup to determine if it will balance out the acid without adding sweetness.

grapeman · Oct 30, 2017

Aromella makes a very nice slightly sweetened wine. The slight tartness works well with the sweetness. I have worked with Aromella since around 2007 (long before it was named- one of the benefits of working in a Cornell research vineyard) and it never disappoints. You have a manageable level as is. Let it cold stabilize to drop a bit of acid and all the other benefits. Like sal said sweeten through small increments in a small beaker (bench tests) to find the best amount for your wine. Often you can keep it fairly dry but it will handle a fair amount of sweetness.

RonObvious · Oct 31, 2017

Sounds like good advice, thanks to you both. Glad to have found someone who has worked with Aromella before. I know it's been around for a decade or so, but it's still pretty "new" by winemaking standards I guess, as there doesn't seem to be much depth of info and experiences on it yet. I love the aromas it's giving up and really look forward to the day when it's finally ready to pour.

I like the idea of waiting - in my limited experience it sounds like more often than not, the best thing to do is nothing. So I'm glad I didn't try to neutralize anymore acid this past weekend. I'll let it sit and cold stabilize it once temps really start to drop. And wait. I'm getting good at waiting.

Question though, as I'm still a novice: The only experience I've had with back-sweetening was on a small batch where I got lucky - I didn't filter it or use sorbate and it still behaved well and didn't push out any corks. I just sulfited it and it was fine. Beginners luck I suppose. I wouldn't want to take such a risk with this Aromella. How do you guys backsweeten? I wouldn't mind investing in a filter (or possibly the all-in-one with canister filter) but the skeptic in me wonders if it's possible, even with a 1 micron filter, to remove every last yeast cell and render the wine completely 100% sterile? Would sorbate be a safer way to go?

Thanks!

grapeman · Nov 5, 2017

Sorbate is the safer bet. 1 Micron is not small enough to get all the yeast out. You need a smaller size and that gets expensive for home wine. Sorbate is pretty reliable, but things can still happen even with that. Get all the yeast out you can, add sulfite and sorbate at recommended levels and it is about all you can hope for and rarely fails.