Back sweetening: Wine conditioner or SS with sorbate?

[skyfire322]

I'm curious. Is there a huge difference between the two? It seems as if the wine conditioner is an "all-in-one" back sweetening solution but 99% of the time, I just see SS with sorbate.

Is there a certain amount where one is better over the other or does it just come down to personal preference/taste?

 

[cmason1957]

Some folks have reported that the wine conditioner has an odd off-taste, I haven't ever used it for that reason. Adding sugar, after Kmeta and KSorbate just seems so easy to me.

 

[winemaker81]

Another benefit to adding your own sugar is that you strictly control how sweet you make the wine.

 

[tjgaul]

In my experience, the wine appears to gain sweetness over time after back sweetening. Knowing this, after doing bench tests I tend to back sweeten to about 80% of whatever blend tasted best, let the wine sit for a month or more and then taste again. If it needs more SS then I can easily give it just enough more to fill the gap. I think that would be tougher with wine conditioner unless you had a significant amount of experience with it and knew the effects of set doses per volume. SS just seems to be easier to work with and is readily available. If you make many dry wines then, like me, you probably have numerous packets of K-sorbate on hand to stop the yeast from procreating.

 

[skyfire322]

Thanks all! I kind of had a gut feeling about being able to control the amount. I guess the main reason I started to think about it was an EC Kraus article I came across: Using Wine Conditioner To Sweeten Your Wines | E. C. Kraus