nice smells

I've been trying a few home made wines this year as I have a lot of fruit in the garden, have some gooseberry on the go and am just about to try a recipe for elderberry and blackcurrant in the hope that it might turn out a bit shiraz-y! However one of the problems I find with home made wines that I've tasted (assuming that its a reasonable taste),is the smell, or bouquet, or rather the lack of it, I actually think the smell can often be as important as the taste,or maybe I'm just a nose-y sort of person..I read that adding rose petals can help - does anyone know of this is the case?

Reply to
kathy doyle
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How long are you bottle aging. A lot of the bouquet develops through aging under cork. Do not drink the wine too young.

Also keepyour fermentation temp cool, taht will help retain some of the bouquet/aroma.

As far as ameoleriating to improve bouquet/aroma, you can add any fragrant thing you want, but it will have affects on other areas as well. So if you puyt in rose petals, it will smell like rose petals, not blackcurrant or elderberries or gooseberries.

Reply to
Droopy

Kathy - I sure wouldn't put rose petals in my wines unless I wanted them to smell (and therefore confuse the taste buds and taste) like roses. Do some research on the enzyme AR2000. This enzyme will release aroma compounds in wine. Here's the web site -

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for the company that makes it. Send them an email...they are very nice and will explain how to use the product.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Reply to
William Frazier

thanks bill, I will have a look at that site, also as regards bottle aging, most of the wine I have tried has been at county shows and that kind of thing, so I don't really know how old it would be, my gooseberry is fermenting on the kitchen windowsill so just normal room temperature, which I hope will be ok. I can see that wine smelling of roses might not be everyones ideal, but sometimes wine does smell of things that the original grape didn't - at the risk of sounding like jilly goulden, sometimes a waft of vanilla, or something that wasn't presumably detectable in the original grapes, - the ones in my greenhouse certainly don't seem to smell of anything much at the moment. Thanks for the helpful suggestions.

Reply to
kathy doyle

I believe that a common fault in "new vintners" is that they expect the wine, that they make, to taste like the raw fruit from which it is made.

This happens very rarely -- Strawberry wine is a good example of the exception to the rule and I am sure there are many others. Certainly dandelion wine doesn't taste of dandelions and a meld of Blackberry and Elderberry has nuances of a claret after a couple of years aging!

Reply to
Pinky

In article , Droopy writes

Does bouquet also develop while the wine is stored in bulk waiting to be bottled.?

Reply to
Alan Gould

Kathy and Bill, Keep in mind AR2000 is only for use in whites, it can cause browning in reds. I was going to use it on reds too and realized it would be an issue after contacting Gist Brocades.

Cool fermenting really helps in regards to fruitiness and aroma, time in the bottle too; you probably were sampling younger wines.

There is an experiment used often where people clamp off the nose and taste different things; they have a hard time determining what they are sampling. I would agree you want the wine to have a pleasing aroma, whatever that might be.

The vanilla you smell may be from oak contact by the way. Oak does all kinds of good things for a wine as far as I am concerned.

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

Hello, We're all different, with different taste buds as well as different abilities to smell. I've had what I consider to be some very smelly wines - dandelion, watermelon, but those were aged longer than a year. I don't know that I would add something to a wine to make it smell better, you might end up overwhelming the original fruit. Plus, I would check whether those petals were poisonous or not. You could try making your wines with a bit more fruit, adding one can of Welch's 100% grape juice to your batch, or bananas, or raisons for more body. These additions should enhance your batch not overwhelm your main fruit. Good-luck. Darlene

Reply to
Dar V

Pinky is exactly right. Many people expect fruit wine to taste like the original fruit. But let me assure you that a good Cabernet does not taste or smell like the original fruit. However, with many country wines, if you stabilize and add a bit of sugar back after fermentation, a hint of the original fruit often returns. If you want your wines bone dry, this is no help.

Also, fruitiness in wines is generally stronger in young wines. Less than 2 years. After 2 years they mature and the fruitiness us usually gone.

Many country wines, much like many good white wines, will start declining after a period of time. For some country wines this period can be as short as one year. There is nothing sadder than making a good country wine and then aging it too long. My recommendation, especially when making a new country wine is to start drinking it at about 6 months but make enough to lass for 2 years. Keep notes on the taste so you can determine if it is one of the short ager's.

More to the point, if your wine really has some off smells, I have found that with many beginners, the most common cause of off smells is bottling it when it is not completely clear. It may seem clear but still have a slight, hard to detect haze. This can cause off smells in the bottle. You might try a more stringent fining program to be sure it is absolutely clear. Especially for my short age wines I like to hit them with SupperKlear shortly be fore bottling. This will take just about anything that will cause off smells out.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

Just want to add that the aroma can be diminished significantly if the wine is served too cold.

If the wine is at or near room temperature and the aroma is still weak, then there are a few possibilities:

1) Decant, or let the wine sit in your glass for 10 or 15 minutes--air contact often opens up the bouquet.

2) Bottle age. If you can sense the aromas you want in the bouquet but they are just too faint, bottle age should intensify the aromas, as well as produce more complexity.

3) The fruit or winemaking techniques just didn't result in an aromatic wine. It happens--sometimes by fluke and sometimes you can predict it (ie a cool fermentation for whites increases floral and citrus smells).

4) Oak age. For whites, it can take away much of the floral and citrus notes and replace them with more austere vanilla and smoky scents instead. For reds, this is often desirable but rarely for whites (of course oaked Chard or Sauv. Bl would be exceptions here).

If you fermented cool, aged with no oak, bulk-aged then bottle-aged at least a couple of years, served the wine at room temp., and let it get some air in the glass or decanter, and it still has very little aroma, then I would look to the ingredients you used...generally it is preferable to get the most out of the wine you are trying to make rather than "artificially" augmenting the bouquet or flavours by adding other materials...

Reply to
CJ

Thanks very much for all these suggestions, I only hope my novice efforts will live up to your expertise!!

Reply to
kathy doyle

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