Hi all a couple of questions on a Zinfandel port I made from last years harvest (grapes were 31 Brix when I started!)
So, I now have 4 gallons of Zin port at 20% alcohol that I need to age appropriately. It's currently sitting in a 3 gallon carboy and a 1 gallon jug. While I would love to put it into a barrel, at 4 gallons that's problematic given that the smallest barrel I can find is 5 gallons.
I'm looking to end up with a late bottled vintage style port, so I need to see some oxidation, but nowhere near the level of that a tawny would see, so I'm expecting to leave this bulk aging for 3+ years before bottling.
Some of my thoughts are to: Leave the wine where it is and use very limited SO2 to allow for some oxidation to occur and use Stavin cubes for oak flavor.
Move the wine into a plastic container that has some (low) oxygen permeability to give it the chance to oxidise a little more in line with what a barrel would provide, again using Stavin, but with higher SO2 to compensate for the higher oxidation rate.
Buy a 5 gallon barrel, and blanket regularly with Argon to reduce the oxidation rate due to the partial fill and again more aggressively use SO2.
TIA. Alastair