Sparkling sumac wine?

[Paulie vino]

Has anyone ever made sparkling sumac wine? I made a very small batch of still sumac wine this year, I have one bottle left and was thinking how it might taste sparkling. Im tempted to transfer it to a swing top bottle and try my first attempt at making sparkling wine. Any advice?

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I'm not familiar with sumac, but I make a small batch of sparkling elderflower every year. I also just disgorged 2 cases of sparkling blanc de noir (pinot noir grapes).

For bottle carbonation you have 2 choices - pet-nat or champagne/traditional method. For pet-nat, you bottle the wine before it's finished fermenting, so fermentation finishes in the sealed bottle and produces bubbles. It's relatively easy, but there is some ambiguity in when you should bottle the wine since you don't know exactly what the final SG will be. Bottle too early and you'll have exploding bottles; too late and you risk anemic levels of carbonation.

Champagne/traditional method is a bit more work but you have much better control over the secondary fermentation. First you ferment your base wine until it's bone dry, then prepare a yeast culture which is added to the wine along with a measured amount of sugar prior to bottling. The art and science is in preparing the yeast culture ('tirage'), which needs to be gradually acclimatized to the high alcohol and (usually) low pH of the base wine.

For either wine you can just open and serve as is or riddle/disgorge, ie remove the yeast and re-cap the bottle. Riddling and disgorging is a bit of a performance but produces a beautiful clear sparkling wine.

There is another option which is bulk carbonation - you would need something like a pressurizable keg and a means of introducing CO2.

Whichever option you choose PLEASE make sure your bottles are rated to withstand the pressure of sparkling wine. Beer is typically carbonated at much lower volumes of CO2/pressure, and so not all beer bottles will be safe to use. Champagne bottles are built to withstand high pressure, which can be up to 6atm/6bar/90psi...

Good luck!

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I clearly didn't read your post closely enough when I wrote the above, as it appears that you want to carbonate just one of your bottles of wine. However, much of what I wrote still applies: (i) use a bottle that is rated for the pressure you want to achieve and (ii) Making a yeast culture and adding it to your wine is probably your best bet.

Is there any residual sugar in your wine as it is? If so (and if you used sorbate to prevent refermentation) you might have a hard time getting a secondary fermentation started.

Assuming no sorbate - Your challenge will be getting a yeast culture going with such a small volume! I'd suggest making a starter culture that is bigger than you need (say 1g yeast, enough for a gallon) and just using a portion of it. For just one bottle, I'd be tempted to try a version of the method described by Lum Eisenman (https://www.valleyvintner.com/NewWeb/HomeWineMakersManual.pdf, chapter 20). Basically, you make a starter and then double the volume with sequential additions of your base wine (with sugar and yeast nutrient added to it). He says you should be able to complete it in 24h if kept warm, but unless you want to stay up all night I think it can be spread out to a few days...

Here's another take on turning country wines into sparkling versions: https://novocastrianvintnersgazette.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/creating-sparkling-wine/

 

[BernardSmith]

I clearly didn't read your post closely enough when I wrote the above, as it appears that you want to carbonate just one of your bottles of wine. However, much of what I wrote still applies: (i) use a bottle that is rated for the pressure you want to achieve and (ii) Making a yeast culture and adding it to your wine is probably your best bet.

Is there any residual sugar in your wine as it is? If so (and if you used sorbate to prevent refermentation) you might have a hard time getting a secondary fermentation started.

Assuming no sorbate - Your challenge will be getting a yeast culture going with such a small volume! I'd suggest making a starter culture that is bigger than you need (say 1g yeast, enough for a gallon) and just using a portion of it. For just one bottle, I'd be tempted to try a version of the method described by Lum Eisenman (https://www.valleyvintner.com/NewWeb/HomeWineMakersManual.pdf, chapter 20). Basically, you make a starter and then double the volume with sequential additions of your base wine (with sugar and yeast nutrient added to it). He says you should be able to complete it in 24h if kept warm, but unless you want to stay up all night I think it can be spread out to a few days...

Here's another take on turning country wines into sparkling versions: https://novocastrianvintnersgazette.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/creating-sparkling-wine/

Not so certain that carbonating a wine is quite as challenging as some folk think. Just as long as you have not chemically stabilized the wine, you can simply add a measured dose of sugar. Depending on the amount of carbonization, you could add about 1 t per bottle. You would need to be sure that the bottle CAN withstand the pressure and that the cork is caged. Either that or you could bottle in beer bottles (with 250 ml bottles, reduce the sugar to 1/2 t) with crown caps (or Grolsch style bottles).

if you made and bottled the wine many months ago, I would be concerned about the vitality of the residual yeast, and would add a few grains of wine yeast with the sugar. As with bottle carbonating beer or cider, I would allow the bottle/s to stand upright at room temperature for about two or three weeks before opening. And be very aware that this secondary fermentation WILL produce lees in the bottle, so expect to lose a good inch or so of wine when pouring.

 

[Paulie vino]

Thanks for all the advice so far

I have 750ml swing top bottles from a local winery, I don't know if their pressure rating so I'm hesitant to use them but that's all I have. I don't want to invest in any other special corking equipment as this is more of an experiment. Is there a way to determine the pressure rating by looking at it? Can I assume a swing top bottle will be rated good enough for my purposes?

I started The wine on 8/28 at 1.096 at the end of August and the wine finished on 9/2 at 0.094 SG, so it is definitely dry and about 3 months old at this point. I never added any sulfites or potassium sorbate to this wine.

I'll check out the links from barrel monkey and read up on the process.

I don't mind a little sediment or less in the bottle so I won't bother with the extra steps to get rid of that stuff.