making the vino!!

[kendo]

ok gang sept is right around the corner and its vino time!!..I plan on doing the (old school all natural )..old vine zif....now im not into making vinegar, my uncle gave me a bottle last week of his 3yr old zif all natural THAT WAS FANTASTIC!!!!..i keep reading it turns to vinegar in a year or so the old school way..well he"s been making this for over 45 yrs and theres no sour or vinegar coming down the pipe line from there..im taking the risk and doing it his way ..his wine is just great, and every time i drink it with friends there like can u get me a bottle of that........so its not true that wine spoils in that short period of time with out the chems....

 

[Rock]

Kendo go for it, please let us know in 3 yrs how your wine has turned out good luck.

 

[mrpoland]

Because wine turned into vinegar doesn’t mean it is spoiled. When the alcohol fermentation is slowing down the other bacteria’s are taking the lead and start malolactic fermentation [MLF]. This process is very good for wine but only when you stop it in right time other way the bacteria’s start using the left sugar and turn it into vinegar. Most of the time people use special bacteria’s to start MLF but there is lots of wild bacteria’s in the air and it is very easy that it will start by itself. Read more about MLF. When you know how it works you will know how to deal with it.
You can read about it on forum in section “Calculators, Wine Logs, and Yeast Charts/MLF ifo “

 

[Sirs]

Well I say good for you I'm into doing it as natural as possible, never had a batch go bad because of non use of chemicals. I had one because of a mishap with a cat and another that wasn't really gone bad, I'd left to much headspace in a jar and it had started to oxidize but was still good wine. There are also a lot of natural chemicals that have been used for years.

I try not to bad mouth the guys who use chems. I just prefer to use the least amount of anything other than juice and sugar I mean if you like it then whats wrong with it.

Best of luck to you one thing be specially careful on keeping equipment clean

 

[robie]

You can certainly make good wine without all the chemicals. That has been done for centuries.

Where sulfites are concerned, the only issue is that IF something should get into your wine, without sulfites, your wine would be spoiled. With sulfites, it will likely be taken care of without you ever knowing it was there.

All organic wine is sulfite free, I believe. Some of it can age for years. However, they have a very, very special wine making environment that keeps bacteria and other nasty stuff down.

Sorbate can be left out as long as you are not sweetening the wine. However, if you sterile filter, you can sweeten without sorbate. Sterile filtering requires very expensive equipment.

Regardless, I am sure that if you follow your mentor's advice and procedures very closely, you can certainly make some very good, chemical free wine that will age a long time.

 

[kendo]

thks Robie, i cant wait till sept....

 

[mrpoland]

I know few people who make wine with no chemicals at all. They told me that wine needs some kind of preservative. In easy way people use sulfites but we should remember that sugar and alcohol is a good preservative as well. If you want to keep wine for few years then you should make strong sweet wine. Strong I mean 16%! If you make less than 16 you can always add some very strong alcohol to make it 16%. I also heard that in the past people use to do pasteurization. I was reading about it in the book, never tried but I know it works. Another very important thing is the cork! If you want to keep your wine for long time in the bottle you need very good quality cork or re-cork the wine after 2-3 years. The synthetic corks are very good for aging wine.