Juice Concentrate for Must...

[winemaker81]

I've generally been using all the recommendations folks have been listing with good results, i.e. yeast, oak, enzymes, blending, saignee, etc. Seems like the consensus here is that concentrates are not recommended. The info about synthetic malic is very interesting and convincing. Perhaps what i've heard in regards to professionals and other folks using concentrates are not the wine kit variety, but the concentrate that is sold to wineries that @Jeriatric mentions above. I assume these concentrates don't have the man-made malic acids, etc.

Concentrates vary in quality, but I've yet to see any description of the differences between those used for kits and those sold to wineries. It's entirely possible there is no real difference, based upon the destination, just a difference in quality level, e.g., WE's Classic, Reserve, and Private Reserve lines differ in quality.

Kits are not intended to undergo MLF, so it doesn't matter what kind of malic acid is added, and cost is the most likely deciding factor. Wineries making wines from concentrate (either entirely or partially) are probably not doing MLF either. If they do? The natural malic and whatever edible portion of the artificial malic will get eaten by the MLB, and the remainder won't. My guess is most of these are in the "fighting varietal" range, so keeping costs down (by not worrying about MLF) is a strong factor.

 

[Jbu60]

I might be hijacking my own thread, but every once in a while, for some reason, when following my standard recipe for bold red wine I get a wine who's color is weak. Couple years ago I made a few different batches side-by-side, three of the batches turned out great, but the one cab/merlot batch had weak color. Hard to tell what happened, my intuition is telling me that all the fermentation oak chips (as well as fermentation tannin powder) caused the color to drop out instead of bind up. Grapes were all from the same supplier, mostly cab, merlot, cab franc, & petite verdot, all central valley exporters...

 

[Jeriatric]

The ones I have used before are 68 Baume which works out to be around 908g/L of sugar. Definitely not the wine kit type, more like thick syrup. It is just grape must that has been concentrated. Australia wine production laws don't allow the use of non grape sugars in wine. Cane sugar is allowed for sparkling wine production only. The acids supplied are usually specified as derived from grape sources as well. Again acids used have to be acids that normally found in grapes as well. If you need colour, see if anyone has planted Dornfelder or Blaufrankish, Germans used them to boost the colour of their Pinot Noirs. Im not sure if those are planted out your way but I saw some random varietals when I was working in Okanagan. Otherwise there is grapeskin derived anthocyanin powders. Im guessing the increase in body and mouthfeel is from increasing the alcohol content, fair difference between 11.5% - 15%. You can always just used cane sugar to achieve the same thing, normal conversion off the top of my head is 15-16g/l of sugar > 1g of ethanol. The use of grape concentrate instead of sugar is mainly legality, New Zealand allows cane sugar and I've seen big commercial wineries there with the big one tonne bags of sugar.

 

[winemaker81]

It's your thread, hijack away!!!

Hard to tell what happened, my intuition is telling me that all the fermentation oak chips (as well as fermentation tannin powder) caused the color to drop out instead of bind up.

All information I've read indicates fermentation oak preserves color. I haven't read anything contrary.

Did the first 3 batches have Petit Verdot in them? It's often used for color, so a Cab/Merlot blend will appear light in comparison to batches PV.

It's also true that not all grapes from a vineyard are equal -- they can differ from vine-to-vine in every possible way. It may be luck of the draw that the ones that went into the Cab/Merlot batch were below average. If you're buying from a central supplier, it's also possible that grapes came from multiple vineyards, which makes variations more likely.

There are other potential sources for the situation, but PV jumps out at me. I have batches of Grenache and Mourvedre/Petite Sirah/Syrah going, and did a bench test of ~80/20 Grenache/MPSS, and the resulting wine was just a hair lighter in color than the MPSS, even though the Grenache is very light.

 

[winemaker81]

The use of grape concentrate instead of sugar is mainly legality

The differences in wine laws between Australia, the USA, Canada, Europe, and South America might drive one to drink. Fortunately, we'll all winemakers so that isn't a hardship.

 

[Jeriatric]

Tannins do help with stabilizing colour, how big are your ferments and do you introduce oxygen into your ferments. Might look at your temperature towards the end of ferment to help with extraction.
Colour and tannin in grapes vary site to site and year to year. Sunlight hours, heat etc etc. If the region and the year is not hot enough, I would stay away from the PV. It struggles to get flavour and phenolic ripeness unless you get a good bout of heat. In good years though it is really good.

 

[Jeriatric]

The differences in wine laws between Australia, the USA, Canada, Europe, and South America might drive one to drink. Fortunately, we'll all winemakers so that isn't a hardship.

Yeah, a bit of a moving target with climate change as well. I know some EU regions are petitioning the use of irrigation in hot years. Australia approved the legal use of water to reduce sugar in grape must. By no more that 1.5% Abv, I think. Not that it wasn't happening anyway.