1. Home
  2. Winemaking Craft Forum
  3. fining for flavour

fining for flavour

In the recent thread "Clearing Red Wine" Tom S. made the comments

My experience with bentonite in red wine is that even in small doses (~1-2 >lb/1000 gal) it can dramatically improve the nose and bring the fruit to the >fore on the palate. >..... >Fining is best done on a wine that is nearly or already clear. The idea is >to improve the _flavor_ - not to achieve clarity, although improved clarity >will frequently be a side benefit. >The use of the right amounts of certain fining agents can turn a mediocre >wine into a good wine, or a good wine into a _great_ wine! >It's necessary to conduct fining trials on any specific wine to determine >its best fining regimen, but that isn't really as hard to do as it sounds.

This is a real surprise to me - because I honestly thought that the purpose of either fining or filtering was primarily to clarify the wine. I had previously thought of fining as an option to strip tannin from a overly tannic wine (usually using gelatin or egg-white) and may be that is part of the equation - but my reading had always lead me to believe that these sorts of additives will "strip flavour" out of a wine and so I had been adverse to using them.

I don't question Tom's comments - in fact quite the opposite, but I think this topic is definitely one worth discussing in more detail - because as winemakers who do not have control over the grapes we use - it is in the effective use of these techniques that we can make better wines.

So a few quick questions.

  1. If fining can be used to make a flavour difference - can filtering also be effective?
  2. Tom spoke mostly about using bentonite - which fining agents have the most to give as regards changing the flavour of a wine for the better?
  3. Since the discussion in the reference post was about red wines - is the same true for whites - and if so what advice would you have?

For example - I have a lightly oaked chardonnay - which spent only a brief time in a barrel as part of the initial break in period of that barrel. I realise that Tom would favour long term storage in a large barrel for his chardonnays - and that may be the only answer to the specifics of this issue - but the result of this brief oaking is a flavour profile of the chardonnay in which the oak and the fruit are not well integrated. The oak is not a smooth round full oak flavour, but more of an upfront oak bite. Can a judiciuos fining smooth this out? And while I'm at it - how do you get that diacetyl butterscotch flavour - in working with Oak and Malolactic and lees stirring, I have managed to bring out oak flavours, toasty yeast flavours, reduced fruitiness .... but I haven't managed to coax that butterscotch vanilla taste out of the wine.

phew .... rant off...... thanks Steve.

Reply to
Steve Small
Loading thread data ...

Absolutely! I just hate to get tho the point where that's the only good option left. IMO, the best wines are the ones that are handled least though.

In alphabetical order: bentonite, gelatin, isinglass, kieselsohl and skim milk. Those are the only ones I have experience with. There are more, e.g. egg whites. Personally, I didn't find egg whites to be very aggressive or useful as a fining agent. Others may differ.

Fining is at _least_ as important for white wines.

You didn't say whether this Chardonnay was barrel fermented or merely spent some post-fermentation time in that new barrel. Also, it's necessary to consider whether the barrel was new American, French or other oak.

Fining can definitely take the edge off of overoaking. Skim milk in particular is a rather potent minus oak agent. I don't like using it for just that reason. It will also strip color from wine. A typical light dose would be about a quart (diluted with water 1 part skim milk diluted to 10 parts, with water, before mixing into the wine) per 1000 gallons.

And while I'm at it - how do you get

From what I have read, diacetyl is absorbed by the lees. To maximize diacetyl, ML is inoculated post fermentation after the wine has been racked from its gross lees. Furthermore, the wine is then racked from the ML lees at the completion of ML.

All of that is in apposition to sur lie aging. You have to decide to go one way or the other. I suppose you could do _both_, but that's a logistical PIA. I learned that lesson when I tried to make a no-ML barrel right alongside a full ML barrel. Separate topping wines, being careful not to inoculate the no-ML barrel from the other, etc. Too much trouble! Just pick one style and focus on that.

Tom S

P.S. - Fining for flavor is a topic that merits a book, really. One post doesn't do it much justice.

Reply to
Tom S

I wouldn't say the primary purpose in fining is to change flavour - that's only part of it (though the idea is helpful). A wider view is that fining is about removing *something* from wine. It could be for flavour/aroma, but it's also done to remove bitterness, astringency, hazes, and even colour.

Whether they remove flavour specifically (i.e. flavour compounds, such as esters for e.g.) is highly debatable. But certainly, they can modify taste.

That's also a highly debatable issue too (witness the debate amongst wine critics etc). In so far as removing the influence the particulates filtered would have on flavour, I'd say yes. But in modifying the wine flavour beyond that, I'd say no.

Add to Tom's list: carbons, PVPP, tannin, and even the yeast itself!

Firstly, whites are more likely to be "hot unstable", so bentonite is a biggy. Secondly, whites *tend to be* more delicate so gentler fining agents tend to be used (less egg whites and gelatine and more casein and isinglass for example).

(Before anyone chimes in that gelatine is used extensivley in whites, think of the white you're talking about: of course heavily oaked Chardonnay can take it, but would you so readily gelatine fine a light Riesling?)

As Tom says: rack before MLF inoculation and rack after (to minimise the yeast and MLB populations, respectively). (Both yeast and LAB reduce diacetyl.)

Maximum diacetyl concentration tends to coincide with the exhaustion of malic acid during MLF so do the post-MLF racking as soon as MLF is complete.

BTW, the butterscotch flavour may well be an oak-diacetyl/MLF combo, but the vanilla will come from the oak, not from the MLF.

Ben

Improved Winemaking More about MLF:

formatting link
and lees:
formatting link

Reply to
Ben Rotter

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.