K Bicarbonate to reduce TA

[Frank the tank]

HI all,

I have a barrel of California Cabernet Sauvignon that I was a little heavy handed with the Tartaric Acid addition at crush. It is a 23 vintage and has gone through MLF. Its current specs are pH 3.46 and TA of 7.15.

I am doing a bench trial with K Bicarbonate to test the wine at a few different addition levels to reduce the TA. The samples with additions have been in the fridge for 10 days and I will sample at 14 days.

My question is:
Can I let the wine warm to room temp to decant and taste or will that cause the K bitartrate crystals to dissolve into the wine by any degree. Do I need to decant with the wine at the cold temp to get an accurate taste test / reading? I ask this also with the addition and racking of the full batch in the barrel in mind.

Thanks for weighing in with your experiences.

 

[ChuckD]

I can’t answer your question directly, but those numbers don’t sound especially high. Have you tried a little back-sweetening to balance the acid?

I have a 100% rhubarb juice wine that did require acid adjustment with bicarbonate. What I did was load up a half gallon of the wine with as much bicarbonate as it could dissolve… I kept it in the fridge and would shake it up every day. I then racked off the clear basic wine and used that to do bench trials and to adjust the whole 6-gallons of rhubarb wine.