Acid adjustment in finished wine?

only add citric acid to your finished wine.

Do not use acid blend at this point. It contains malic acid, which may begin fermenting in the bottle.

Your options are citric acid (as Doug recommended) or tartaric acid. If you use tartaric acid you will need to cold-stabilize the wine after the addition or crystals of potassium bitartrate will appear in the bottle eventually. They're harmless, but are an appearance issue.

BTW, in either case it's best to do a bench trial on a small volume first (and in the case of tartaric acid that would include cold stabilizing the sample). If it tastes OK, scale the addition up for the entire lot.

Tom S

Can you give me the reason for your answer of adding onl citric acid to finished wine? Thanks, James

Thanks for the helpful information. james

Thanks for the helpful infomation. james

If you add an acid blend the malic can ferment out into lactic acid, the tartaric can drop out. citric is the only stable acid at this point...

Actually, that's not really true. MLB can metabolise citric acid just as they can malic. Tartaric is really the only stable acid.

Having said that, many winemakers use malic/citric regardless of this possibility because it isn't an *inevitability*. Most fruit wines (which is what we're talking about here) are malic/citric dominant anyway, and not all of them come under attack from LABs. I realise it's a possibility if you don't sterile filter and that high SO2 concentrations are possibly undesirable and don't necessarily keep the bugs at bay, but the fact remains that such bacterial attack does not happen as often as some would make out.

To answer the original question, I'd say yes, bring the pH down to <

3.6 with whatever acid you feel comfortable using. Infact, bringing the pH down will infact help to avoid bacterial attack to some degree.

Ben, prepared for the flames ;-)

James, I have stayed out of this discussion until now since I have very little experience with fruit wines.

As an FYI, this year I had a high pH Cabernet with a high TA too. It was 3.81 and 6.4 g/l. At 6.4 g/l it was too tart for a dry wine. My options were live with it, reduce the acid or add sugar as I saw it. It's great now but it was a lot of work, I reduced the acid.

I added about 35 g tartaric to 5 gallons which reduced the pH to 3.5. Now it was incredibly tart, so I began cold stabilizing at around 27 F. I ended up adding potassium bicarbonate to get the acid to my target of a finished wine with a ph below 3.8 and a TA no higher than

6.0, but there was a trick to that too.

The thing about adding acid at the end of fermentation is it does not integrate as well as earlier additions would. I dealt with that by only treating half the wine, I have 20 gallons of Cab and ented up finishing 10 gallons actually.

I pulled the pH down on 5 gallons and brought the TA to 5.3 g/l; this was blended with 5 gallons of untreated Cab at a pH of 3.67 and a TA of 6.6 g/l. Now I have 10 gallons of finished wine with a pH of 3.6 and TA of 6.0 g/l.

This took about a month to work with; I only bring it up because I see values of TA as being important also. You can use taste as a guide to a point, but I use taste and values of both TA and pH to make decisions, especially when adjustment is needed.

Citric is commonly used for fruit wines, but tartaric swings pH better. If you can't get the wine below 30 F you may want to be careful with tartaric additions, once it's in it needs cold or a whole lot of time to get it stable. (It does not hurt anything, but crystals will form over time.)

I don't always go for a pH of 3.6 either; I have lived with 3.8 and sulfite at 50 to 60 PPM free if the TA is 6.g/l or lower. It's not technically recommended but that's why it's called and art, numbers only get you so far.

Joe

Boy, nothing like a concensus of oppinion!

Just my 2 cents worth. Try a test batch to see if you adjustment helps. I agree with James. I have messed up some batchs when I tried to bring the pH down. I would suggest you bring them down by taste using which ever acid you decide on. Then test them. If you do not get them down to 3.6 or less, then plan to drink them young. There are many good wines that have pH higher than 3.6 but most do not keep well.

Ray