Chemicals,chemicals......

What you mean "we"?

There are a number of good uses for the _judicious_ use of certain, generally regarded as safe chemicals in amateur wineries. One of the more obvious is the use of sulfites to retard the effects of oxidation, so that your wines will last long enough to age gracefully over the course of years rather than months.

Sure, you can make good wines without any chemicals, but isn't winemaking difficult enough as it is, doing it the _easy_ way?

Tom S

How long do you store your wines? The use of chemicals is something that we struggle with as well...

On the great day of 24 Feb 2004 11:53:38 -0800, Sneezed and expounded:

A chemical free wine would be a bottle containing a high vaccum.

ie: no water, glucose,fructose, acetic acid, ethanol, anthocyanin compounds, malic acid, acetic acid, sulfur compounds, etc, as found in every wine - all 'chemicals'

I'm sure you mean _added_ chemicals. As a chemist "chemical free" is one of my pet peeves. Everything around you is by definition made of 'chemicals'. :)

-- I practice the art of creative spelling!

remove 'z' in address for reply

I'm curious as to where you get your berries from, K.?

clyde

Glad to meet another chemist on here! You beat me to the punch.

By "we" I mean us who make home made wines from berries.

I store my wines from 2 - 6 years (varies dependent of volume made). Most berries have acids which preserves them (low pH ca. 3.0 and some have benzoic acid as well). In fact, because of this you hardly experience any tendency to malolactic fermentation in a berry wine. I have never used sulfite (other than sterilising equipment). As for fining, patience is the best practice. But my earlier statement was slightly incorrect. I do use enzym (pectolase) in some of my white wines. Maybe someone would claim that this is a chemical.

I apologise in advance if my response is a bit harsh, but you've struck a nerve with me with the quoted post.

The way you use the word "chemical" it almost sounds like you could interchange the word with "poison". Why do you believe the use of "chemicals" in the winemaking process is so bad? For that matter, what exact chemicals are you opposed to using in the process (hydrogen dioxcide)?

I used to be amused by people's fear of "chemicals", but now it just bothers me. These are the types of people that wouldn't take acetylsalicylic acid if their life depended on it, but would happily pop a few aspirin (or, more accurately, go to the herbal store and buy "willow bark extract") without thinking twice. Perhaps we just need some cute, short names for the chemicals we use as part of winemaking process. Maybe if we called potassium metabisulfite "pomet" people would be more accepting.

The worst part is that your "chemical free" wine is already full of "chemicals". By taking the stance you have chosen, you are probably just making your life twice as hard for no good reason.

Sorry, KJ, the simple act of fermenting your fruits is adding a possible carcinogen into the beverage, that being, ethyl carbamate, or urethane. This is a natural by-product of fermentation, there's really nothing you can do to prevent it, there is no way for you to know what levels are being produced under your conditions, and nobody is really sure what a safe level is, anyway.

Something to chew on as you ponder the evils of "chemicals".

Brian

Me too! (although I defected to IT straight after my PhD)

I'm not sure that I'd classify an enzyme as a chemical per se, but the last time I checked, benzoic acid was a chemical - and I'm pretty sure it isn't approved for use in commercial wines in the USA.

From your comment re fining, it seems that you regard their main purpose to be the clarification of cloudy wine. That isn't really the case, although improved clarity is frequently a by product of fining.

The real purpose of fining is to improve the flavor profile of wines thus treated. It sometimes happens that a wine that has already fallen clear can benefit greatly from fining - possibly to reduce aggressive tannins that mask the fruit e.g., thereby improving the mouth feel and balance of the wine.

Tom S

Wise man! You must have heard the statistic about chemists having on average a ten year shorter life expectancy compared to other vocations.

I never heard of an IT guy dying from a paper cut or exposure to a computer virus. ;^D

Tom S

From my experience many things I do with home-made wines would not be tolerated commercially. For example I add sugar to my mix which would not be allowed. In general good grapes do not need the additives that other wine needs. Modifications in commercial wine tend to be related to the oak barrels that are used (or not used) I'm positive that the acid, or lemon juice I feel free to add, the yeast, nutrients and the enzymes would not be permitted. I visited a winemakers supplier locally. He had a range of yeasts (but I'd need to buy a kilo), metabisuphite and filters that might interest me. Not much else.

Nah, that never bothered me - I do much worse in my garage, and I don't have to fill in risk assessments!

The main reason was (sadly) that I realised I could have a lot more flexibility with where I worked/who I worked for in IT, and earn more money with it.

What is and isn't allowed depends on what country you're in, and even what region or state within each country you're in. You haven't mentioned anything that wouldn't be allowed here in NY where I live, and all of it except the acid, I believe, would be allowed in California, the largest wine producing area in my country, the U.S.

Dave

**************************************************************************** Dave Breeden snipped-for-privacy@lightlink.com

Yes kklein. That was exactly what I meant. It may come as a surprise to some of the other contributors that I hold a university degree in chemical engineering. The word "chemical" can, as demonstrated above, be interpreted differently and actually can also relate to several alternative (and different) definitions. In a discussion forum of wine making I thought it was not necessary to define it and explain in what context I was using it. It is simply about what you add to the fruit (other than the ingredients to make the necessary reaction happen to classify the end product as "Wine") - not that which is already there.

I guess we should all use the methods we are most comfortable with and consider the discussion closed.

Poison hmmmm...

My pregnant wife and three year old just had their flu shot in December. In January we find out that it has something called thimerosal in it which contains ethylmercury. Silly me, I thought the flu shot contain inactivated virus.

Chemicals aren't bad, it's the people that put poison in them and don't tell anyone that are bad.

BTW I'm not ranting, ranting was what I did when I found out.

Don

Acid additions (not benzoic) are permitted in California, but sugar is not. There is an easy way around the sugar issue though: grape juice concentrate.

Tom S

In my eyes this isn't a debate over the interpretation of "chemicals" in wine (and this thread seems to have gone off track). When people take issue with others saying that they dislike added "chemicals", isn't the real issue that they are making it sound like those "chemicals" are unnatural products to be added to wine?

Whereas infact, most additives to wine are completely natural. There are not many (besides fining agents and sorbate) which aren't normally naturally present in wine at some point already: acids are there, sugars are there, SO2 is even often there. Such additives have also been used in winemaking for centuries, long before large commercial wineries ever existed. Their use of them had nothing to do with profit seeking or band handling/storage compensation. They used them because they were deemed to *improve wine quality*. Aside from risk issues (which could be argued) and large wineries (which see winemaking as an industrial process, though they are only a proportion of the industry), that is the philosophy with which they are generally used today.

The evils of additives shouldn't be whether they are used, but how and when they are used. For example, having excess bentonite in your wine is just like throwing a miniscule amount of clay in your glass, but it also means the fining hasn't been done properly.

Ben