I just realized that a wine I, and moreso my girlfriend, are enjoying has a pH of 3.92 !! I have to take samples to work to check as I do not own a pH meter.Paper strips are not that accurate. I understand that if I don't lower the pH to about 3.5, I could be inviting spoilage and weakening sulphite effectiveness. I have other batches that I am adjusting that taste flat also, using only tartaric acid. Anybody here leave pH levels over 3.5?
It would be interesting to know if the commercial high pH wines (above 3.5) are sterile filtered prior to bottling and to know the free SO2 levels at bottling. My home made wines have not had much of a shelf life at high pH values - less than a year. Of course, I did not sterile filter either.
Many commercial wineries sterile filter all their wines.
I know they did their whites. I was not aware of them sterile filtering their reds but I am not disputing what you say. This means that for a home winemaker, unless one has sterile filtration equipment, then high pH wines are very prone to infection with undesirable organisms.
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