What exactly happens to a bottle of wine if frozen for, say, 3 months or 6 months and then defrosted? How close will it be to what it started like?
I'm trying to track the evolution of the wine without introducing the vagaries of elapsed time between tastings. It would be nice to sit down with 3, 6, 9, 12 month old samples at one point to see the transformation.
Fantasy?
Michael - I use various degrees of cooling, including freezing, to drop acid out of juice or wine. If you freeze bottled wine, and the bottles don't burst or push their corks, you probably will drop some tartaric acid that wasn't removed with normal cold conditioning. If this happens your wine will be different than the same wine stored at higher temperature. Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas
Can I assume that tartaric will actually drop out? I mean, it won't move when frozen but does the chemical process occur anyway such that when I defrost the wine it will then drop to the bottom? Would a vigorous shaking bring it back in or once it's out, it's out? Also, it's not perfect, but I assume I could add tartaric back once it's defrosted.
Michael Brill wrote "Can I assume that tartaric will actually drop out? I mean, it won't move when frozen but does the chemical process occur anyway such that when I defrost the wine it will then drop to the bottom? Would a vigorous shaking bring it back in or once it's out, it's out? Also, it's not perfect, but I assume I could add tartaric back once it's defrosted."
Michael - If I freeze wine to lower acid I let the wine totally thaw and rack. Then when at room temperature I test. I find that wine that has been frozen has less acid that the same wine that has been stored at 35F for the same time and both have less acid that wine that has been kept at room temperature. So, the acid does leave the wine sometime in the freezing/thawing process.
Some say it's important to rack wine off precipitated K bitartrate crystals quickly after removal from cold storage. I really don't know how fast the K bitartrate would dissolve when wine warms up. Maybe someone else has some information about this. If you find out let us know.
Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas
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