Foul taste of pectin enzyme?

I generally use the liquid type. Even in it's most concentrated form, it has almost no odor. And, if you place the tiniest of drops on your tongue, it has a slightly sweet taste and very little after taste. At the levels normally used in winemaking, there should be no noticeable effect on the wine other than taking care of pectin problems. Wine doesn't like to be handled too much. I suspect that what you are tasting is a kind of "bottle shock" effect (which will go away in time)

-or- if you didn't add enough extra sulfite, all the extra handling may have caused some oxidation in the wine (which_won't_go away). HTH

I kinda like the taste of pecin enzyme. It kinda tastes a bit sweet and light, and has a pleasant smell. I'm concerned that if it has a nasty taste that perhaps it could have been spoiled in some way, or wasn't in fact pectin enzyme but was something else.

LG

Yes, I thought that it might have been spoiled in some way too. I bought some more pectin enzyme in another shop and it wasn't the same. More or less the same smell but way weaker than the first batch.

The wine is probably oxidized too due to all the racking and filtering I've done. I'll probably just filter it again and bottle and hope for the best. If it doesn't turn out ok I'll just dump it.

Doh.. don't give up yet! I hate to hear of a perfectly unrepaired batch going to waste! :D

Maybe try a few things..

• fining with gelatain/kieselsol (tends to strip a wine a little, but may also strip some bad flavours/spoilage too)
• cold stabalization
• filtering again, after the above two

After it's stripped a little but not completely horrible.. you could just freeze it, collect the 1st half of the runoff, then toss the leftover ice.. add some sugar to 1.020 and now you might have some instant port that might not be half bad! (oxidization isn't as bad for something that ends up as a port wine methinks) Then bottle it! Worst case is you've bottled half the amount you would have had to. :D

LG

Nah, I haven't given up yet. That was my frustration talking :)

I tasted the wine again today and it seems that the bad taste of the pectin enzyme has gone away now after a week or so. It still has a slight haze, even after filtration, but I think I'll leave it as it is. Would it be a Bad Thing to bottle a wine with a haze? If it hasn't settled by now I don't think it'll settle in the bottle either, right?

I've already done the gelatin/kiselsol fining and the cold stabilization so I don't think that would help.

Talking about the pectin enzyme. Is it supposed to break down the proteins to smaller molecules so that the wine looks clear or does it make the pectin proteins settle?

Close. Pectic enzyme, oddly enough, breaks down pectin, a polymer made up mainly of strings of a derivative of galactose (a sugar). If you do have a pectic haze (which you can test for with methyl alcohol additions to a small sample, I think), pectic enzyme will clear it right up.

I can't remember what kind of wine it is--have you tested for protein haze, which is a different problem than a pectic haze? Bentonite is used to clear proteins, but it's normally done before they agglomerate into a visible haze.

Dave

Time usually never hurts. :) If you have a bit of a haze, it might be smart to be on the safe side and let it age a few months and see if it drops anything, in which case you can make a decision then.

Ian

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