Hello, While I am thankful and appreciative for this Christmas gift, the idea of drinking cloudy, sediment laced wine, well, quite frankly...I can't quite bring myself to do it (especially when I know how good the wine could taste in another couple of months. The wine is very young - about 4 months and was definitely rushed into bottling. I received 4 bottles of homemade red grape wine - since I don't make grape wine, I guess I wanted to hear what you all thought about what I was thinking of doing. My plan would be to open all four bottles, siphon off the sediment and into a small glass carboy. Let it sit another couple of months to clear, rack again if necessary, and then drink or rebottle. If I had to top up, I would use another basic red wine. Darlene ;o)
Herewith a 'let sleeping dogs lie' approach. Seal over the corks with wax so that the bottles can be stored upright for 4-6 months. At the end of that time, remove the wax and corks with outunduly disturbing the sediment, rack the contents into new bottles with perhaps 20-30 mg/l of SO2 and the job is done.
Ian, Good point, and I appreciate the 'let sleeping dogs lie approach'. I can handle a little bit of sediment, but there's a fair amount of sediment - I'm talking 1/2 inch -3/4 inch in a couple of the bottles. Would the wine be affected by that much sediment? Darlene
Over time, that'll compact to much less. Furthermore, the wine may very well benefit from lees contact. Think of it in terms of extended mini-bulk aging. Lay it down for a year (OK, 6 months) stand it up for a week or two, carefully decant and taste. You'll know better then what to do with it.
I certainly wouldn't re-bottle it. Don't you already have enough to do? ;^D
Ok, I have assumed that the wine is stable (all yeast/bacterial activity has completed) and upon reflection my 'wait and see approach' may not be appropriate. My first comments were based upon keeping handling the wine and oxygen contact to a minimum.
Is it actually sediment or simply a zone at the bottom of the bottle that is slightly cloudy? When wine clears, in small glass one may observe a quite well defined transition between the upper 'clear' and the lower slightly cloudy zone. I suspect it is to do with the suspended particle sizes and their affect on light.
Or has some material sucked from the bottom during racking just prior to bottling found its way into your bottles?
After 4 months the only sediment should be be very fine material. If so then there is no issue with waiting, the small amounts of dying yeast can have a beneficial effect on the wine. However, the wine will probably be still microbiologically unstable and it shouldn't be in a bottle at all until it is stable. Popping corks and wine foaming all over the place could be very messy. Have a quiet chat to the winemaker and find out if he managed to get MLF to complete at the end of primary fermentation. Seems that this may be a good chance for you to learn a little about red wine production.
Your original approach may be best. Let the wine settle and rack it after the coldest part of your winter and again before bottling at the beginning of your summer. This will allow the wine to partially cold stabilise and then warm up again so that unfinshed biological stuff can complete. Look for slight gas production and a very small increase in pH.
Ian, The wine was a gift from a relative down south, who doesn't mind drinking cloudy (very cloudy) wine from bottles with (actual) whitish/yellow sediment in the bottom of the bottle. He picks the grapes in August, then racks a couple of times, stabilizes, and then bottles in early December so he can send them for Christmas presents. This is not the first time I have received such a gift - I tried sending him a subscription to WineMaker for a year...I doubt he's concerned about MLF. I do know that he stabilized it, so I'm not too concerned about about having bottle bombs. I appreciate the insight. I think I'll leave for 6 months and then decant, since it doesn't sound like the sediment will hurt the wine. Thanks. Darlene
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