I bought a 5 gallon bucket of riesling juice in Ontario earlier this month. I wanted to halt fermentation to have a residual sweetness, which would make it a bit fruitier than just dried out with sugar water added...
the guy who sold it to me said: add pot metabisulfite....1/4 tsp... and that should halt it. Well, it didn't. So I've been trying to cool it down in the freezer to see if that halts it...but when it warms up again, there go those tiny bubbles! I'm afraid I'm going to get a dry batch of riesling after all. I tried to halt it at 1.005...but it may be beyond that now.
Would there be any other ways to stop it dead in its tracks? Thanks. Rick
Don't know what Rick had, but if you don't want added yeast, don't buy Vin Bon. In fact, I wouldn't buy Vin Bon even if they didn't add yeast. Very thin, characterless wines.
it was a place in hamilton ontario... costas.... I'm not slamming them....some people may really enjoy this. My brother buys ONLY from them. some may not like it... I guess personal taste. they seem to do a very brisk business... but it is juice that is chilled until ready to be fermented or sold.... they do it on premises or they sell to customers such as me.
The only comment I would add is that all wine juice contains some level of wild (natural) yeast and some are actually very agressive. The first Chenin Blanc I ever made contained no cultivated yeast and did ferment to dryness. It was very good. That said, I would follow Tom's suggestion as to Epernay II next time. Cultivated yeast usually takes over from wild yeast, and is predictable to some extent.
That sulfite advice was just bad, I would just chalk it up to experience and move on. He might have been thinking that non-cultivated yeast is not sulfite resistant, as most cultivated yeast are. I'm not sure I buy that, yours was not that way.
A lot of residual sugar Riesling is low alcohol, so I would not be too concerned about that either, I have seen them as low as 8%. Sweet wines made this way are usually drunk up fresh anyway. I would fine it, let it settle, rack it and refrigerate or filter as you were advised and enjoy it now. We usually find a way to drink up 25 bottles of good wine in a year over here....
I used an aroma enhancing (AR2000) enzyme this year on all our whites. I can't believe how well the whites turned out and think it was directly related to that. I will use it from now on. It really does enhance the bouquet. If it smells good, it tastes good. I'm not telling you to go out and find some, I just mention it because we made Riesling again this year and it's very good.
We did not try the chilling route by the way. We fermented to dryness, fined, filtered and added 1.5% RS to balance out the acid. Most of it is already gone; it's well liked. It came from Regina juice.
I'm a little late to the party with this one, and pretty new to wine making, but here are my 2 cents:
Everyone is talking about how to halt fermentation, which is what the OP asked about, but isn't another possibility to ferment to dryness and then sweeten the wine?
Yes, that's one way of doing it, but the product isn't as good. Using a sussreserve (unfermented juice) is considered a "cheat" among quality producers of sweet wines.
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