pH problem

I have had this sort of problems several times. I have tried to add acid to get the pH down and generally I have not liked the results. When I have just let it make as is I have come out with some pretty good California style wines. My suggestion would be to leave it alone but drink it young (1 to 2.5 years) as it probably will not age well. Some others may have some special techniques to treat this situation but ...

Ray

DRINK IT... :-)

We've covered this problem (high pH, high TA) several times this crush. The answer is the same: hit it with tartaric before fermentation to bring it down to ~3.4pH, _ignore_ the TA, and chill out the excess TA after fermentation. Piece of cake...

Tom S

Good question, but it's hard to say for sure. By the time ML completes the wine will be at a higher pH than you adjusted it to though.

The reason I suggested adjusting the pH from 3.9 in the first place is that if you did nothing at all to that must, by the time fermentation and ML were complete the wine would be so flat you could bottle it in _envelopes_! It'd probably go well with tortillas and flounder though. ;^D

Tom S

When you chill to bring out the excess TA does the ph raise back up again?

Rick

This describes my Syrah grapes as well. PH=4.0 TA=.67. I adjusted to PH=3.5 with LOTS of tartaric (it seemed to be a good buffer) and will cold stabilize later to drop the excess TA. Might need a bit of potassium carbonate even, but as long as you don't use too much it's really undetectable in the wine. So I agree with Tom S about adjusting before fermentation if you want a wine that isn't flabby. There's probably not a lot of malic acid left in these grapes, but ML will bring the PH up a bit as MIGHT cold stabilization later on but it's better than trying to age and bottle a wine at PH 4.0+

John