dirty wine

[joeswine]

I read an artical in jack kellers site a while back about dirty wine,its something that happens to wine that after clearring a fine silt settles out over a preiod of time,(not tartanic crystals)it was actullay a seperate subject ,but i can't find it now, the result was that no one seams to have an answer for ,i'am running into this problem not only with a few of my wines but some of the commerical wines i purchased the temp in the storage area is between 62 at its coldest and 72 at the top end,,what do you think??????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

[SmokinDawg]

Hydrogen sulphide
Rotten egg gas. Often produced during fermentation, but should have been
dealt with by the time a wine is bottled. Occasionally develops in bottle (such
a wine is said to be reduced or dirty)

 

[joeswine]

no not that,would have a off odor or taste ,taste great and deffinetly no odor,could be a chemical break down in the juice it self remember i said it happened to some of my commerical wines also?

 

[SmokinDawg]

well,according to all the research I just did, it seems that commercial wines get that haze from a protein that grapes get when the vines are underwatered. one of the reasons to add bentonite. Although the articles all seem too agree on that if you let the wine sit on the lees for an extended period of time that it mostly eliminates the haze from forming in the bottles later. Just another reason to bulk age.

 

[grapeman]

Joe, the technical name for it is crapus settleouticous. I generally takes a while to show up in wines because you need just the right conditions for the phenominon. Aries has to line up with Capricorn , coinciding with the last full moon of the first quarter after the grapes were harvested. Then you need a virgin to walk by the winebottles and stand on her head while patting her stomach.


Sorry, just practicing for tommorrow!

Either that or there are just a few extra fine solids left in the wine after initial clearing that settle out with age. Swings in temperature seem to accentuate the fallout. Doesn't hurt a thing.

 

[joeswine]

i agree about bentonite i use it in the first process and supperklear at the end just as if it were a kit so the finding starts at the begining and at the end then most times i use my mini jet filter pump system to polish,,?

 

[joeswine]

appleman if i could find it on kellers web site i would i really don't believe there's an answer for it ,see its not all the wine just some ,its the commercial wines that do it also i have a bottle from a good winemaker right fromm his real winery,clear as a bell put it up on my guess rack mo. or so later i see break down,try to get in kellers site but couldn,t figure out how to ask the question (dirty wine) thats how it was written maybe you can??

 

[hannabarn]

The only problem I can see with the cure is finding the virgin to stand on her head!!!

 

[joeswine]

i could see were that could be a problem ,,well guys just thought i'd run it pass you thanks anyway//

 

[JimCook]

Joe,


By 'dirty' commercial wines, are you referring to sediment that has settled in the bottle? What types of wines are these?


- Jim

 

[joeswine]

let you know tomorrow jim ,and yes standard brands,i don't know if vibration's is setting this off or what but that least its not all my product,but it is real and it is out there,ask jack Keller,just wanted to see whom out there has encountered this event,no problem,,,get back to you tpmmorrow

 

[smokegrub]

I had that happen recently with my JAO. It was sparkling clear when it went into the bottle and now there is a fine sediment in the bottles.

I have had something similar on a couple of wines, including a pineapple wine that is now clearing. Those wines looked fairly clear in the secondary, but I went ahead and added SuperKleer anyway. You wouldn't believe the amount of lees that formed afterwards! My best guess is that these wines contained things in solution that precipitated when the fining agent was introduced.

Bottom line is that I have decided to use SuperKleer before bottling all my wines in the future. Edited by: Smokegrub

 

[Wade E]

Im guessing tat these commercial wines are not big names Like Mondavi reserve or the such were they are not aged for a few years. I would also bet the wines of yours havent been bulk agin for 6 months or longer. I have had a few when I 1st started and my Chocolate raspberry Port which I selfishly bottled way to early cause I wanted to give a few away for Christmas. It was already delish but upon sitting in mt cellar still had quite a bit of sediment left to drop. Some wines will drop sediment for quite some time and that dusting on the bottom is the very fine sediment that stays suspended much longer due to its size and can sneak through most filters unless you have the ability to sterile filter and even then it posibly can kind of like a faint haze settling out.

 

[joeswine]

wade maybe your right ,i don't know however i never got down stairs to get the brand but i know as ti was one they make a fruit wine sort of like a cooler onyl top self if you get my meaning,was really disappointed in that one and surprised,oh well we can move on//thanks

 

[PeterZ]

Prior to the advent of sterile filtration it was very common to have bottle sediment in wine. Decanting the wine with a candle behind the neck was the romantic way of eliminating it, with the sediment and a couple of ounces of wine left in the bottle.


A wine, even a white, can look perfectly clear and still have solids in it. The human eye can only detect particles down to a certain level. I think it is around 30 microns for someone with excellent vision. Ultrafine solids can take as much as 50 years to settle. There is a complex equation that governs settling rate, involving densities, temperature, and particle size.


When a bottle of wine sits in an environment where the temperature varies, even only by a degree or two, the wine develops convection currents. This causes the particles to gently "bump into" each other and stick together. The equation I mentioned above tells us that larger particles settle faster than smaller particles. (Think pebble vs. fine clay dust.) That's how they build up and settle out in the bottle. They were always there, they were just too fine to see.


Similarly, when you add a clarifying agent you chemically bond the particles together around the clarifier molecule, making them bigger and hastening the settling. By including clarifiers in the kits, manufacturers are helping us minimize any fine particles left in "clear" wine.

 

[Tomy]

I used Sparklloid on a Apple, Cherry Strawberry and a Pomegranite that I bottled at almost 4 months old and was perfectly clear by the naked eye at that time. It has some wispy looking sediment at the bottom of the bottles. The wine tasts fine, has good noise but apparently the really fine lees did not compact in the seconddary and when I bottled the auto siphon also sucked these up with the wine. I am going to investigate the reason for this, maybe more time bulk ageing & a different type of chemical to compact the lees before bottling. Tomy

 

[joeswine]

well peterz thats makes the most sense so far if i remember the artical there was no correct answer ,but you make sense this affected my fresh juice char/pino gris blend a bottle of alize from france,very good cognac and fruit blend and a few others i,guess the answer if there is ,is to use a polish filter instead of the #2,none of the others at this point were affected,who nose,/thanks

 

[joeswine]

tomy if you follow peterz- time in a bottle wouldn't make a difference ,ahigher micron filter might have ,for me that is ,cause they were perfectly clear at the time,go figure-never used sparklloid,try superklear its very good ,my fruit wines are dense with flavor i don't worry to much with filterring just consistent racking if theres a little sediment in the bottle no problem,it is what it is///hope you feeling better //jp

 

[Tomy]

I talked to George about the problem of fine lees in the bottle when it looked perfectly clear at bottleing, and he is sending me some chemicals including Glycern to use. So will quit using Sparklloid and try a different method. Thanks Joe I am feeling much better, have my weight down to Light weight class, but don't think I could take Roberto Duran, or Julio Cesar Chavez today

Tomy

 

[PeterZ]

One other thing I do is never bottle a wine from a carboy with any visible sediment on the bottom. Instead, I rack to another carboy and wait a month or so. When the bottom of the carboy looks clean, then I bottle.