Bulk aging acceleration tips/tricks...

[Bmd2k1]

In the science/art of wine making -- TIME seems to be the "magic" element that makers worldwide rely on to help them craft their best wines possible.

The evolution of a wine seems to follow a bell curve from start to peak to over the hill.

As a relatively new and curious wine maker -- I'm curious what, if any, tips/tricks/protocols the best vintners engage to flatten the front end of that bell curve from start to peak.

It may be that Time & proper storage conditions (temp/humidity/location yadda yadda) are it -- but, the What If -- always intrigues me!

This likely is a question asked countless times over the centuries.....but one I'm tossing out here to see what pops up

Cheers!

 

[vinny]

As a relatively new and curious wine maker -- I'm curious what, if any, tips/tricks/protocols the best vintners engage to flatten the front end of that bell curve from start to peak.

Patience!

Sorry, I had to...

Dinosaurs?

 

[Ohio Bob]

Well back in my day...
I’m sorry I forgot what I was going to say.

 

[vinny]

From what I have been taught here, aging relates a lot to the structure of the wine. I don't know of any specific tricks. Others may be able to offer another side to consider as far as techniques go, but the more structure and tannin, the longer a wine is going to take to blend.

I was told on my first kit (Shiraz) to only add one of the provided oak chip bags. As juice ferments in primary, tannin combines with proteins and precipitates out of the mix. The reason we add oak (considered sacrificial tannin) at the beginning is to give up the tannin from the oak to not deplete that in the grapes/juice. So by adding less oak I lowered the overall tannin level. Having a higher level of tannin would have taken longer to blend, and this is the main reason I was instructed to remove one pack. With that I could aim for an aging time of around 6 months.

This is the reason that Dragon's Blood and Skeeter Pee are fast drinkers. They do not have the depth or structure of a heavy red and they are able to blend out faster. Dragon's Blood being palatable immediately, but notably better within only a few weeks. I have a couple of kits on the go that I am aiming to make into BIG reds. I added 2 oaks chip packs up front, and both kits had skin packs. Once racked to secondary I added oak cubes to both. Tannin is obviously not the only factor, there is going to be more robust and bold flavors from the higher quality juice, oak, and skins, as well as more tannin. It is all going to take much longer to blend together and round out.

I was tasting my Shiraz in secondary monthly. I didn't think it was drinkable until 3 months after the 8 week bottle date. It got better after another 3 months, and I should likely open a bottle to compare soon.

I expect the two big reds I am aiming for will take 6+ months after the bottle date to round out to where I am getting excited about them. I intend to do the same and sample over years to see how flavors develop. Mostly, like you, just cause I am curious.

I think the long and short of it really comes down to what you want, and presumably nothing you do will offer you a better (bigger) wine than time. I have seen more seasoned members note that sometimes you start drinking a good wine at 9 months, only to find out that your last 2 bottles left at 18 months is a GREAT wine. That is the risk we take....

I subscribe to the 'if it tastes good, drink it' club. As a fail safe to that, I make enough that I will have much to sample as aging progresses.

 

[BigDaveK]

I understand what you're going through. At first I fell into various rabbit holes as more and more facets of wine making made me curious. The rabbit holes have transformed into black holes with infinite gravity and I can't get out!!!

There IS a surefire way to make a wine reach it's peak faster. But first...
Wine is incredibly complex. There are so many chemical reactions going on, and at different rates, and some reactions affect other reactions. Cooler temperatures and that darned time thing really are important.

The one surefire way to make wine mature and peak sooner that I've found is...size.
A 375ml bottle will mature faster than a 750ml bottle which will mature faster than a gallon jug which will mature faster than a carboy which will mature faster than a barrel which...etc. But then complexity comes into play again. A mature 375ml may taste different than a mature 750ml which may taste different than...etc

In other words, make a fast drinker like Dragon Blood or Skeeter Pee and wait for the good stuff. We're dealing with Mother Nature. What happened the last time you told a woman to hurry?

 

[vinny]

I'm going to challenge you on this one. Partly because I can, but mostly my brain is nitpicking terms.

I will be happy to be corrected, but having a lower volume of wine exposed to equal parts of air as a larger batch could certainly change flavor structure, due to O2 absorption, but is that really aging faster? Are the major chemical reactions that take place in the first three months actually happening significantly faster in a smaller batch?

I split most kits into a 3 gallon carboy and 15 bottles. I have bottles from both batches and I still have one half in bulk. I think I am going to have to pull out some bottles and make a side x side comparison. I didn't notice any difference at 9 months between bottle vs carboy.

Someone can speak to the science.. I'll do a taste test on the flavor development between different sized batches and see if I can prove my nitpickyness wrong.

 

[JBP]

Definitely a tempting question especially given the "rapid aging" work with whiskey in recent years. Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately!), those techniques are not suited for our craft.

 

[BigDaveK]

I'm going to challenge you on this one. Partly because I can, but mostly my brain is nitpicking terms.

I will be happy to be corrected, but having a lower volume of wine exposed to equal parts of air as a larger batch could certainly change flavor structure, due to O2 absorption, but is that really aging faster? Are the major chemical reactions that take place in the first three months actually happening significantly faster in a smaller batch?

I see what you're saying. I think maybe it's a volumetric issue - it doesn't "age" faster, there's just less of it that needs to mature so the process ends a bit sooner. Though my gut is telling me that a larger mass of wine aged longer will taste better.

 

[Ohio Bob]

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2015/11/device-to-speed-up-wines-ageing-process-invented/
Not sure how this thing works other than it’s related to micro-oxygenation.

 

[winemaker81]

As a relatively new and curious wine maker -- I'm curious what, if any, tips/tricks/protocols the best vintners engage to flatten the front end of that bell curve from start to peak.

The short answer? There is none. Wine takes what it takes to age.

If you make a given style of wine, it will have its own lifespan. You want a faster aging wine? You make something different.

While wine ages faster at warmer temperatures, that's a dangerous path, as the results are not predictable.

Something to consider is that there is a significant difference between a wine being drinkable and that same wine at its peak. Normally a wine is quite drinkable well before it reaches its peak, so honestly, any wine is fully drinkable rather quickly. Will the wine improve, given time? Most of the time, yes. But the wine can be drunk fairly quickly, if one desires.

Patience, Grasshopper! Make a lot of wine, a lot more than you can drink, and in 1 to 3 years you'll have the wine you want. Make different styles of wine, so some is quicker aging, some is longer aging, and exercise the "P" word.

Not sure how this thing works other than it’s related to micro-oxygenation.

Thanks for pointing this out. However, the article is from 2015, and in the last 7 years this item hasn't taken off, so my expectation is that it's not a success.

 

[zappoid]

Make a lot of wine, a lot more than you can drink, and in 1 to 3 years you'll have the wine you want.

Perfectly said .

 

[winemaker81]

This is the reason that Dragon's Blood and Skeeter Pee are fast drinkers. They do not have the depth or structure of a heavy red and they are able to blend out faster. Dragon's Blood being palatable immediately, but notably better within only a few weeks.

Dave, ya hit the nail squarely on the head. As BigDaveK put it, wine is very complex, and not all wines are alike. Whites and lighter fruits have a lot less of everything (constituents), so there are fewer chemical changes that will occur, and the ones that occur appear to progress more rapidly. Lighter red grapes and any grape fermented in a lighter style (less time on the skins), have a longer period. Heavy reds, including a few fruits such as Elderberry, have so much more going on inside, and take the longest.

IMO, tannin is the big one -- the softening of tannins takes time.

I was very happy with my 2019 Merlot and Zinfandel during aging, but the first bottles I tested a few months after bottling were disappointing. Both are high ABV (~15.7%) and were very much out of balance. So I gave them another year to see what happened, and honestly wasn't happy with either. Not bad wines, but out of balance. Neither tasted quite right.

So I started using them up. Not rapidly, as neither wine had peaked, but I was not saving them as I had been. However, I opened a Merlot last night (now 3 years 3 months old), and WOW! The balance has shifted. It's not a great wine, but it's darn good. I've got 15 bottles left and they will be drunk sparingly. The Zinfandel is also more in balance (it's mature now) and that will get used first.

I subscribe to the 'if it tastes good, drink it' club. As a fail safe to that, I make enough that I will have much to sample as aging progresses.

Bingo! I was reserving my 2020 Sauvignon Blanc -- my son & I split 7 gallons of juice, so I had just 15 bottles. When young this may have been the best white I've made. So I doled it out sparingly, to make it last. Unfortunately, by last September (~22 months old) it was in decline, so I'm using up the last few bottles.

Similarly, the Chardonnay I made that same year for my son's wedding reception also started declining before the 2 year mark. We only had a few bottles left, so it wasn't a problem. At Christmas my son commented that it did it's job (was pleasing at the reception), and the last few bottles being less pleasing wasn't a problem.

The one surefire way to make wine mature and peak sooner that I've found is...size.

I will be happy to be corrected, but having a lower volume of wine exposed to equal parts of air as a larger batch could certainly change flavor structure, due to O2 absorption, but is that really aging faster? Are the major chemical reactions that take place in the first three months actually happening significantly faster in a smaller batch?

I read an article in the Wine Spectator circa 1990 regarding German Riesling from the late 1700's. Scarily enough, these few bottles were still good -- a fine needle was used to withdraw samples for testing. All the bottles were oversized, and I recall a comment that most long-lasting wines are bottled in large bottles.

IIRC, the explanation for larger bottles aging better is the O2 ingress through the cork, as well as any light penetration of the bottle, is better absorbed by the large volume of wine. This makes sense, e.g., 375 ml, 750 ml, and 1500 ml bottles all have the same cork, but O2 ingress has less overall effect on larger volumes.

Aging of wine is basically the accumulated chemical changes that happen over time. My take is that yes, wine actually ages faster in smaller quantities.

But for any wine other than real lightweights (DB, SP), bottling quickly is not a good answer. I proved to my own (dis)satisfaction that bottling quickly can produce inconsistent wines, e.g., a lot of bottle variation. Giving wine at least 4 months to go through the initial chemical changes is highly beneficial, and bulk aging heavier wines longer makes equal sense, as they have more changes to undergo.

Here's a good experiment -- bottle a wine in 375, 750, and 1500 ml bottles. At 3 month intervals, open one of each, decant the 750 and 1500 into clean 375 ml bottles so there are 3 identical bottles, label & bag 'em, and have someone else mix them up. Blind taste the wines in random order, recording notes. This would be interesting if done with a white, a lighter red, and a heavy red.

@Bmd2k1, this is a good thread!

 

[Rice_Guy]

* you should look at age in wine as spending money in your wallet. ,,, Once shelf life is gone it is gone
* the chemistry involved involves the slow addition of oxidizers to reduced molecules as tannin which smooths the flavor, “micro-oxidation”. If one does fast oxidation a different set of off flavors are formed as acetaldehyde or VA (with Acetobacter)
* wine is a preservation system designed to maintain calories from a crop, we in this day and age are wealthy since we have tools which will slow age down. ,,, ex glass bottles, sulfur dioxide, corks, Nomacork, aluminum caps. If you want to speed age up an easy way is to store it in an old fashioned wine skin or a new LDPE milk jug. As a test I did a secondary ferment in a ten liter Cubitainer and was able to create sherry flavor in six months. At this point two years out that wine goes down the drain.
* the chemistry of aging involves polyphenols. You could source out grapes which are low in tannin ,,, or white grape juice and then add artificial color and gum arabic to build texture back ,,, or mulberry juice has no tannin with a WOW color density (you also can build a BIG red wine with mulberry juice and loading it up with tannin and create the reverse, an age worthy wine)
* temperature is involved. The general assumption in P chem was chemical reaction rates double for a ten degree C increase in temperature
* one can remove tannins by fining with gelatin or egg or milk protein or soy protein isolate or saliva or . . . .
* ? ? ? what is your real goal, make the stuff go away? give it to the twenty year olds

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318286774_New_techniques_for_wine_aging

 

[BigDaveK]

OMG! @Rice_Guy I downloaded that paper just yesterday!
The past few weeks I've become addicted to technical papers. Some things are blahblah to me but still fascinating. They've given me a great appreciation for just how incredibly complex wine is. That's one reason why I love this hobby. We can throw things in a bucket and be happy and we can also look behind the curtain and be amazed.
Darn rabbit hole.

 

[vinny]

Dave, ya hit the nail squarely on the head.

Good teachers. It was a long while ago, now. I don't know if you remember, but it was you that walked me through the first kit and leaving out the second oak pack. 6 months was sooo long to wait for a wine to mature.

Now, I'm basically just waltzing around posting your teachings as if I knew it all along.

Winemaker81.. Patience!

Vinny...

6 months later..

Vinny... Patience!

 

[winemanden]

I understand what you're going through. At first I fell into various rabbit holes as more and more facets of wine making made me curious. The rabbit holes have transformed into black holes with infinite gravity and I can't get out!!!

There IS a surefire way to make a wine reach it's peak faster. But first...
Wine is incredibly complex. There are so many chemical reactions going on, and at different rates, and some reactions affect other reactions. Cooler temperatures and that darned time thing really are important.

The one surefire way to make wine mature and peak sooner that I've found is...size.
A 375ml bottle will mature faster than a 750ml bottle which will mature faster than a gallon jug which will mature faster than a carboy which will mature faster than a barrel which...etc. But then complexity comes into play again. A mature 375ml may taste different than a mature 750ml which may taste different than...etc

In other words, make a fast drinker like Dragon Blood or Skeeter Pee and wait for the good stuff. We're dealing with Mother Nature. What happened the last time you told a woman to hurry?

You're right about size. I always used to bottle 2 or 3 375s or even smaller ones to check on how the full size ones were doing. I realised after a while that the two tastes didn't quite match up, so I stopped doing it.
I still use 375s but only for using in cooking etc.

 

[Bmd2k1]

...as the prophetic "Orson Welles" used to say ---- We'll Serve No Wine Before it's Time!

Barring any major advances in Flux Capacitor development -- it would appear that Time is on Our Side (Thanks Stones!)

-- dig the banter on this topic!


Cheers All!

 

[BigDaveK]

You're right about size. I always used to bottle 2 or 3 375s or even smaller ones to check on how the full size ones were doing. I realised after a while that the two tastes didn't quite match up, so I stopped doing it.
I still use 375s but only for using in cooking etc.

Interesting!
Another anecdotal tid-bit - like others I oversize my batches and my secondaries usually have an extra small container with an airlock. Many times I noticed that the small container is crystal clear while the official secondary is still cloudy.

 

[winemaker81]

Another anecdotal tid-bit - like others I oversize my batches and my secondaries usually have an extra small container with an airlock. Many times I noticed that the small container is crystal clear while the official secondary is still cloudy.

Part of that may be the thickness of the container -- there's more material to see through in a larger container, so clarity may appear less and color may appear darker.