What is your white wine degas, clearing & stabilization protocol?

[NorCal]

I‘m doing a bentonite trial On the Chardonnay. Pulled a bottles worth from the barrel and did a .6 grams per gallon bentonite addition. Here are the results in under 24 hrs. I’ll wait a week and taste, but I’m liking what I see.

 

[NorCal]

I want to invite @Busabill to document his process. His whites/roses come out sparkling clear.

 

[balatonwine]

From my experience, adding fining agents do strip out the suspended material fast, but also the aroma and tastes of the wine. So I never use them.

My wine always drops clear. If I give it enough time. Do not be too much in a hurry to bottle. Give it time in bulk. Do not be afraid to rack if needed. It should drop clear. Some of my wine may not drop clear till the next year's vines are growing. Which is okay. And I do almost all white wines. So do have some experience there.... Wine takes time. Give it time.....

 

[NorCal]

Next week we are having a small get together where there will be a tasting of @4score and @Busabill Chardonnay before and after clearing and cold stabilization. They kept one bottle of wine as the control sample, so this should be very interesting, because the wine tasted excellent and they didn’t want to lose that.

 

[Obbnw]

With education, one hopes it will.



Yes that is sad. And the job, and challenge to educators to help them understand. That is if they did not understand, then the educator needs to see how to help them understand. The failure is not with the student, but with the educator. And a good educator always tries to moderate their message to help most understand.

Side note: Yes, in my professional life I have worn the cloak of a professional educator, tutor, trainer, and factual information disseminator --- The hardest, most underpaid, and most underappreciated, jobs around (rocket science may be easy in comparison... )

EDIT : A joke I like to include in some of my lectures:

A professor explains with complex formula to the students a theorem on his white board.
He looks around the room and sees no one understands.
So he erases everything and diagrams it and explains it second way .
He looks around the room and sees no one understands.
So he erases everything and does it all over again a third way.

Then he steps back, looking at the white board, pauses --- and realizes he finally understands it himself....

"The failure is with the educator". In theory I agree, in reality, too many people don't want to learn or say they want to learn but put in zero effort. In those cases the failure lies with the student.

I'm in this thread because my wine from last year's harvest hasn't cleared yet. I'm going to take your advice and wait longer.

 

[balatonwine]

I'm in this thread because my wine from last year's harvest hasn't cleared yet. I'm going to take your advice and wait longer.

Also take my advice to not be afraid to rack it. Add KMeta as needed. But a simple racking of cloudy white wine can sometimes do a lot.

Hope this helps.

 

[Hazelemere]

I'm making a 60 gallon barrel of Chardonnay this year and will result in plenty of wine to give away. My process results up to this point have been good enough for my own consumption, but not good enough to give away to others.

I am looking to not have any sense of CO2, clear and no crystals or other debris in the bottom of the bottle over time or when stored in the fridge.

What process would you prescribe to achieve that end result?

degas?
clarify?
stabilize?
filter?

bentonite 6 days into an active ferment to get rid of protein. Barrel tannin may do the same on enhance the bentonite effect. Aerating/racking 6 days into a ferment invigorates the yeast to finish off sugar to eliminate CO2 on bottling. If you get SG 0.992 before bottling or even 0.993 you shouldn't have a gas problem unless you undersulphite and have bottle malolactic fermentation.

 

[NorCal]

Next week we are having a small get together where there will be a tasting of @4score and @Busabill Chardonnay before and after clearing and cold stabilization. They kept one bottle of wine as the control sample, so this should be very interesting, because the wine tasted excellent and they didn’t want to lose that.

I gathered the two samples and the difference in clarity is noticeable, but not night and day. The tasting of these bottles will happen this evening….will be quite interesting.

 

[NorCal]

We had a great wine tasting event, 7 people, and 16 bottles were opened, half of which were current barrel samples.

When comparing the two Chardonnay wines; one just settled/cleared on its own vs. one that was cold stabilized for two weeks in a fridge and with a healthy dose of Bentonite, the consensus was:

- the cold stabilized and cleared wine was noticeably clearer, especially in the glass
- there was very little to no perceptible taste difference between the two
- there was a weightiness (mouth feel) difference between the two Chardonnays, as one described a hazy beer vs. a standard IPA

Overall, it showed that @Busabill has the white/rose stabilization & clearing down pat, the taste difference was insignificant and cold stabilization and clearing is a worthwhile step if you do not want to deal with remnants in the bottle.