Lum - Furfural

I hear PETA has come out against furfural and plans to organize protests against it. ;-)

Brian

Is this the one Frederick?

Grape concentrate is made by removing water from juice. The water is removed by heating the juice to 120 - 140 F in a vacuum vessel. A material called hydroxymethylfurfural is produced (from sugar) when grape juice is heated to these temperatures, and hydroxy-methylfurfural produces a distinctive taste in wines made from concentrate. This is why most wine competitions have separate divisions for wines made from concentrate.

Lum Del Mar, California, USA

Hi Lum

Yup, that's what I was looking for. Thank you so much.

Best Regards Frederick

Dem folks been too long away from da farm !! LOL

Great information. A previous poster talked about juice buckets having the grapes heated to extract the red color. Is this furfural then also in this juice as well?

I've just been having this discussion in another forum and I will make the same comment here...

This compound IMO constitutes a flaw in the wine, judges should be trained to recognize it, and wines marked down in competitions if it is detected. The stronger the taint, the more points should be taken off.

Agree or disagree? Let's hear from any wine judges out there.

Brian

Brian, Most of the people I judge with (west coast) agree with you Brian. That's why many of the wine competitions here have separate categories for wines made from fresh grapes and those made from concentrate. Lum Del Mar, California, USA

This is an interesting subject, usually with a lot of passion on both sides of the fence (kits vs. grapes). In terms of the judging context, I'm curious what people think about the last year result of the Winemaker mag's competition, which had grape and kit wines in the same categories and on the whole kits did at least as well as grapes. Is it because advances in processing now enable kit producers to concentrate juice without the cooked flavor, or is it because the judges are not trained to recognize it?

Thx,

Pp

Perhaps this is a regional issue. I know by experience that wines made from concentrate do not score well in west coast competitions. Lum Del Mar, California, USA

The advertising in Wine Magazine is in large part from kit manufacturers. How many grape growers advertise there? Many homewine maker supply stores wouldn't exist if it weren't for year round sales of wine kits. The economics of the situation say winemakers using kits should be included on equal basis in all contests. Tim

I'm no expert, but I've made many batches of wine from inexpensive grapes (mostly central CA valley) and many many more from various maufacturers' kits. When I first started doing fresh grape wines I was immediately critical of all my past kit results, partly for the reason discussed in this thread and partly because of kit reds' general lacking of decent aromatics. Two or three years later further on, with more batches of each under my belt, and I'm now willing to admit that in some ways, dollar for dollar, I do prefer some of these kits.

In my mind, at comparable price points it's basically a trade-off between different factors. Working with cheaper and more commonly available grapes, you're more likely to struggle with a wine that is leaner in flavour and higher in alcohol than a comparably-priced kit. On the other hand, the kits will have, to varying degrees, this "cooked" quality and far less to offer in terms of aromatics. To state the same things in terms of positives, the kit reds will likely be better balanced overall while the wines from cheaper red grapes will seem fresher and more aromatic.

So in terms of what is really better or worse -- I think each judge probably has their own opinions as to how serious a flaw this one is. Some may feel that any detectable amount is a serious no-no, while others may feel that a tiny amount is less serious than other possible flaws in fresh grape wines such as the combination of a relatively thin flavour with an excess of tannins or alcohol. My own opinion seems to change based on my mood (and probably whatever else I've put my taste buds through recently) so I try and keep a lot of choices in my cellar :-)

Cheers, Richard

Hi Richard .....I would be interested to know if you or any others who make red wine from both kits and inexpensive california grapes ,use "spent" skins and stems to beef up a redwine kit.....does it take a great balancing act,..any radical adjustments.......how much to use per kit etc.??.....anyone care to comment?...I too have been disappointed in upper end kits.......andy j.

I've made 2 red kits (higher end ones) and added skins from fresh grape fermentations (also better quality reds from Napa and Sonoma) - using about

2 gallons of skins per 6 gallon kit. I don't think it requires any radical adjustment other than the wine will require substantially longer to age because of the tanins added (also I tried to minimize the seeds that I put in to avoid getting harsher tanins). It will improve the kit and spreads the cost of the grapes to another batch of wine. I'd say it's worth doing (better than the kit alone), but not up to the standard of wine made from good grapes because there's still that off flavor that this thread started off talking about.

Ed

Andy,

I haven't tried what you suggested. I did save some pressed skins from 2002 and 2003, and added both to some free run juice from the

2003 batches -- the idea was to ferment only 90% of the 2003 Syrah juice with 100% of the skins in order to get better concentration, then to reuse both the 2002 and 2003 pressed skins on the 10% free run juice. The latter seems to have been a dismal failure -- pretty poor colour and flavour, and still hasn't cleared. The only wine I ever produced that I'm planning to dump down the drain -- fortunately only 6 or 7 litres :-(

I did save some of the spent 2003 skins (not the ones I used in the above experiment) to try further experiments, but have 2 baby boys now and by the time I have time for more winemaking these may be too freezer-burnt to use.

In any case, I'm not sure I would add spent skins to a premium kit, for a number of reasons: (1) fear of introducing MLF -- probably not a high risk, but would be catastrophic if it occurred (2) not sure worth the extra effort of having to press post-fermentation (3) potentially losing a bit of the kit wine to the spent skins and pressing process, and not having extra to top up the carboys (4) fear of vegetal notes or some other undesirable effect coming from the spent skins and spoiling the whole thing

One thing I'm unsure about is whether my failed experiment is due to the year-long freezing of the 2002 skins. I suspect it may have something to do with the failure of the wine to clear. If freezing them and using later is a problem, then that in itself is a bit of a problem because I generally would never have time and capacity to do a kit wine at the same time as my grape wines because I generally do all the fresh grapes that I can handle. I do several different varieties because it seems to me that these cheaper red grape wines benefit greatly from blending, and I want to have lots of blending options.

All other factors aside (timing, availability, etc) I would probably instead save some extra fresh grapes and ferment those whole (but crushed) with the kit. I wouldn't necessarily pick the same varietal as the cheap grapes I work with usually aren't that good for the "main" varieties. I'd probably instead pick something like a Ruby Cabernet or a Valdepena (aka Tempranillo) that has decent tannins and colour. Here again you have the issue of having to press, but you've added more juice and so don't have the top-up problem.

Of course the other option is to make batches of each type of wine and blend post-fermentation. But I think this is probably the riskiest in terms of MLF -- I've never had a fresh grape batch that didn't eventually go through spontaneous MLF -- so I probably wouldn't try this unless I had some lysozyme on hand to try and prevent the MLF from starting up again in the blended wine.

Anyhow... Hope all that rambling gives you some ideas :-)

Richard

I suspect the answer to this question is yes, but really don't know. More importantly, it made me ask myself a different question that I'll ask here in case someone knows the answer:

White kit wines generally do not seem to exhibit this same flaw, at least to anywhere near the degree that red kit wines do. Assuming that both must go through the same type of condensing process, why is this the case? Does the juice/skins from the red grapes have more of whatever causes these undesirable chemical compounds to be produced, or is it really the result of a heating step that the reds go through for the sake of colour and/or flavour extraction which the white aren't subjected to?

thx,

Richard