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Tartrates in your Wine Glass: Do They Matter?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 10:24:44 AM
by Josh F., Wine Enthusiast Companies
Have you ever taken a nice, white wine out of your cellar and as you reached the bottom of the bottle, noticed there were crystals floating in it? These are tartrate crystals. They are formed when the tartaric acid in your wine combines with the potassium (also found naturally in wine, another one of wine’s many health benefits) under very cold temperature conditions forming the salt, potassium bitartrate. If you’ve ever used cream of tartar in cooking or baking, it is the same substance pulverized into a powder. In fact, these crystals scrapped off of wine barrels are the source for the cream of tartar you buy in the supermarket. Tartrates can be found in red wines as well, but they are more often found mingling with the sediment, and are normally decanted out.
Wineries can and do add a step in processing called cold stabilization. Here, they chill the wine down to near freezing, causing the tartrates to precipitate out. Then they filter the wine to eliminate them.
The higher quality a wine is, the more likely it is to have tartrates. This is because good wines are not cold stabilized, filtered or over processed, in order to preserve the intricacies and subtle character of the wine.
If you’ve ever seen these tartrates, you may have wondered what to do about them. Well, one thing you can do is absolutely nothing. Tartrates are completely tasteless, odorless and harmless, so there’s nothing you really have to do. However, if you don’t like having these little crystals floating at the bottom of your wine glass you can simply decant your white wine as you would an older red using a funnel with a screen.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 10:24:44 AM
by Josh F., Wine Enthusiast Companies
Have you ever taken a nice, white wine out of your cellar and as you reached the bottom of the bottle, noticed there were crystals floating in it? These are tartrate crystals. They are formed when the tartaric acid in your wine combines with the potassium (also found naturally in wine, another one of wine’s many health benefits) under very cold temperature conditions forming the salt, potassium bitartrate. If you’ve ever used cream of tartar in cooking or baking, it is the same substance pulverized into a powder. In fact, these crystals scrapped off of wine barrels are the source for the cream of tartar you buy in the supermarket. Tartrates can be found in red wines as well, but they are more often found mingling with the sediment, and are normally decanted out.
Wineries can and do add a step in processing called cold stabilization. Here, they chill the wine down to near freezing, causing the tartrates to precipitate out. Then they filter the wine to eliminate them.
The higher quality a wine is, the more likely it is to have tartrates. This is because good wines are not cold stabilized, filtered or over processed, in order to preserve the intricacies and subtle character of the wine.
If you’ve ever seen these tartrates, you may have wondered what to do about them. Well, one thing you can do is absolutely nothing. Tartrates are completely tasteless, odorless and harmless, so there’s nothing you really have to do. However, if you don’t like having these little crystals floating at the bottom of your wine glass you can simply decant your white wine as you would an older red using a funnel with a screen.
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