Fizz when bottling

[TonyP]

I bottled my Chardonnay today and found my wine had some fizz in the bottle prior to corking. I'm quite surprised as I didn't detect an issue when I tasted a month ago. I suspect the problem is either bacteria or an issue from SO2 during sanitizing. Thoughts please on my problem and suggestions (if any) on salvaging.

 

[sour_grapes]

I am being optimistic, here, but I think not unrealistic: Maybe it was just not degassed enough? IMHO, you want a little bit of gas in a Chard; otherwise it seems flat. Maybe your detection threshold was just a little different a month ago and now. I find that my threshold varies with temperature, too.

 

[TonyP]

I did a lengthy degassing with a wine whip and tested until I was certain gas was finished. I'm convinced it's a bacteria issue in part because I did everything in the basement for the first time.

 

[Rice_Guy]

. when judging wine I frequently see a light bubble on the edge of the test glass. After talking it over with a judging team we usually note it but ignore it on the score. If at home I will put 100 ml in a gravity cylinder and pull a10 inch Hg vacuum on a wine. It is not unusual to get bubbles, ,,, your wine will fall in the normal if it still has CO2.. A 5 inch Hg vacuum is available if you own a home vacuum cleaner, I encourage you to try the vacuum test the next time you think you are completely de gassed (use a single hole cork and tubing to seal cylinder to vacuum), my bet is gas will come out. With a vacuum corking set up I see it on wine I thought was a year old and of course degassed.
. natural, ambient pressure degassing is related to temperature, I will guess that your basement is cooler than the previous winery, ,,, ie it has a greater tendency to hang onto dissolved gas now. If you are serving at the warmer temperature it will want to come out of solution.
. normal wine is at a pH below 4.0, most bacterial families will not grow in this range, we work to maintain a no oxygen reductive environment, most bacteria require a oxidative environment to grow, ,,, ie if you have a good air lock the infection risk was low. Also note the risk of food poisoning is basically zero under conditions creating quality wine.
. if you get SO2 up to 100 ppm the taste will be obvious, try mixing a few grains of meta in a sample and taste it, ,,, my guess is the flavor is quite different and you will decide high SO2 is a defect that creates what judges call a major defect

I did a lengthy degassing with a wine whip and tested until I was certain gas was finished. I'm convinced it's a bacteria issue in part because I did everything in the basement for the first time.

For me the conclusion has been light CO2 doesn’t matter.

 

[Rocky]

I bottled my Chardonnay today and found my wine had some fizz in the bottle prior to corking. I'm quite surprised as I didn't detect an issue when I tasted a month ago. I suspect the problem is either bacteria or an issue from SO2 during sanitizing. Thoughts please on my problem and suggestions (if any) on salvaging.

Tony, just to be clear, is it "fizz" you are seeing or just bubbles? "Fizz" to me would be like one would see in a glass of Champagne, i.e. bubbles emanating from the body of the wine. Bubbles around and on the surface of the wine could just be trapped air from the bottling process.

 

[sour_grapes]

natural, ambient pressure degassing is related to temperature, I will guess that your basement is cooler than the previous winery, ,,, ie it has a greater tendency to hang onto dissolved gas now. If you are serving at the warmer temperature it will want to come out of solution.

^^^^^^^^
This!

 

[Johnd]

I bottled my Chardonnay today and found my wine had some fizz in the bottle prior to corking. I'm quite surprised as I didn't detect an issue when I tasted a month ago. I suspect the problem is either bacteria or an issue from SO2 during sanitizing. Thoughts please on my problem and suggestions (if any) on salvaging.

How long after fermentation was this Chard debased and bottled? Was it from a kit or from grapes? Unless you didn’t use sulfite properly, it’s highly unlikely that it’s a bacterial infection, and if it were, it probably wouldn’t taste good at all.

 

[TonyP]

Thanks for the post. I shake a bottle twice and get considerable bubbles. The wine then looks like its full of specks but they rise to the top and disappear.

RJS Cru Int'l Chardonnay, 12L. I degassed and cleared 2 days after fermentation ended, waited 40 days and bottled - slightly longer than instructed. My routine is to clean everything both after use and again before next use. I sanitize during cleaning (use One Step) but sanitize with K-meta/SO2 anyway.

Wine was 59-63F during fermentation. so I knew it would take a while to degas and it did - about an hour with a wine whip.

 

[bstnh1]

Did you rack at all during the 40 days? Did you degas again before bottling?

 

[TonyP]

UPDATE:
I stored the corked wine at 72F for 2 1/2 days then emptied the bottles into a fermenting bucket and degassed with my drill. Unbelievable! Even at low speed, it looked like my car washing suds. Degassing took nearly 2 hours and bubbles never really stopped but the wine eventually stopped fizzing and tasted better. It seems to be OK and hopefully will improve over time but seems a bit flat so I suspect my degassing brought in some O2.

 

[Johnd]

Unless you get a vacuum pump capable of pulling a nearly 29inHg vacuum, it's pretty hard to get all of the CO2 out in as short of a time frame as you had from completion of fermentation to bottling. Even with vigorous whipping, it just seemed like there was always some pesky gas in there when I tried whipping. Glad you decided to give it another shot. Hopefully you added a little sulfite to the wine before you bottled it, it'll scavenge all of the O2 out of the wine.

In the future, consider getting away from the kit time lines, they cause the kinds of issues that you are having. Time is very much your friend in winemaking. Many of us allow white wines to sit for 6-8 months before bottling, and reds for a year or longer.