Nasty floaties in my bottle

zember311 · Mar 16, 2008

So from the first bacth of wine I made, all of it is gone except for one bottle. They drank it all before it could age 2 days from the carboy after taking 1 1/2 months to make.

They all said the wine was great , but I have a problem.

I SAVED 1 bottle ! from 6 gallons~

I went to look at it today and there are nasty floaties in the bottle, almost as if you chewed up a piece of bread and back washed into the bottle before corking.

What would cause this ?

1) I had that wine racked so many times it was crystal clear.
2) I added campden once during the racking but never added it before bottling.
3) I did add sorbate 3 days before bottling.
4) the bottle was green, and thinking about it, there could have been some indirect sun exposure to the bottle for about 2ish weeks ?

I was darn sure the bottles were clean, as every other bottle I have had form that batch was ok.

I have a 1500 ML jug of the same wine of the same batch in the fridge and it is still crystal clear, smells and tastes good.

but for some reason this one room temp bottle looks well, ironicly like a lava lamp.

Any ideas to what that could be caused from ?

Kyle
P.S
Just kinda a bit freaked out knowing I got 6 gallons of zin that I am aging for 4 to 6 months in the carboy before I bottle and I want to be sure I didn't screw up to where I am gonna make the same mistake.

Wade E · Mar 16, 2008

Was there sediment at the bottom of the carboy that you bottled from? You could have bottled all clear wine except for that last bottle and just sucked up a little sediment at the last second.

zember311 · Mar 20, 2008

You might be right Wade, heck you haven't been wrong yet ;-)

I do recall the sediment to look closely like that when I racked it , I am used to lees though that seem to stick fast to the bottole of the carboys and look sandish, this sediment was light and floatie, which caught me off gaurd.

It wont settle fast to the inner of the bottle either, I let it sit for a wekk, poick it up slowly but still it stirs up that fast, so I am not sure whether it is a keeper or just to throw it.

Wade E · Mar 20, 2008

If there isnt enough for it to stick to like a big carboy full then it wont really get heavy and compact. The proteins usually fall last and that makes the lees heavy and compact and without those it will just be light stuff that can be easily disturbed. Was everything sanitized well and did you add the extra 1/4 tsp of k-meta before racking or bulking besides whats included in the kit?

Edited by: wade

SmokinDawg · Mar 20, 2008

It could be worse:

Doctors
say that a cup of wine per day is pure health. But sometimes just one
cup can send you to hospital and it's not because of alcohol abuse.

A Spanish team has found that wasp venom in wine and grape juice seems
to be the cause of wine poisoning, severe allergies induced by small
quantities of ingested wine. The venom can enter the wine from wasps
accidentally smashed along with the grapes during their initial
processing for winemaking.

The team led by Alicia Armentia of the Rio Hortega Hospital
<div ="">

< style="display: none;" ="text/" ="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

in Valladolid, Spain, tackled five cases of patients who had developed
severe allergies after drinking either wine or grape juice. Three
subjects had facial flushing and swollen lips, while another patient
experienced asthma-like symptoms.

The most severe case was that of a patient that developed anaphylactic
shock, a whole-body allergic reaction that can induce death as heart
and breathing stop, the same reaction as if you're stung by a swarm of
bees. The patients were successfully treated, but the team wanted to
find the cause of this type of poisoning.

An array of tests eliminated the most obvious suspect factors, like egg
white, added sometimes to clarify the wine and decrease harshness and
grape extract. When the researchers investigated the patients' blood,
they detected antibodies typical for a recent bee or wasp sting, but
none of them had experienced that.

Then the team compared for allergic responses red grape juice to the
white one, but also fresh wine and three aged wines, coming from
various vineyards. Both types of juice and the freshly processed wine
induced allergic reactions in blood samples coming from the treated
subjects.

More detailed chemical investigation encountered traces of venom coming
from yellow-jacket wasps, not from honey bees, in the beverages.

"It's likely the insects fell into the grape juice when the grapes were pressed," said Armentia.

"Wasps abound on grapes in late summer. They will come to anything
that's overripe, because they're running out of food by this time of
year," explained Lee Townsend, an entomologist at the University of
Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, US.

The aged wines did not contain venom, because like any other protein, it breaks down in time as the wine matured.

"Even a few weeks’ aging probably breaks down the venom enough that the
risk of a dangerous allergic reaction is minuscule-but if they want to
be on the safe side, people with bee and wasp allergies may want to
avoid drinking freshly made wine," warned Armentia. </span></span>

grapeman · Mar 21, 2008

My personal guess and that is just a guess, is that this is some sort of spoilage organism. If you didn't treat with campdens early enough or in high enough concentrations, or did not have a low enough pH, then it is possible to have spoilage at room temperature, but not refrigerated. What you describe could be ropiness caused by leuconostoc oenos or pediococcus bacteria. These appear as floating junk in infected wine and can give it a lava lamp look. It doesn't give off bad odors or tastes.

The best prevention is adequate S02 from campdens or k-meta. If your zin has been made per directions, it should be OK, but I'n not sure I would drink the other stuff that has the floaties.