Re: Storing wine

I think the "skunky taste you are speaking of (also found in other european lagers) is merely the flavor of the hops they use over there......different altogether in taste than american/canadian beers..just different not bad neccessarily.......Andy J.

Hi Rob, What you are stating is quite correct and well known. I do not dispute the action of "high" frequency "light". My question is what compounds are involved? Hence the analogy with beer. There, it was found that one family of compounds caused the problem. The hop people changed the compounds and now we can "enjoy" beer in a clear bottle. My question really comes down to "can this be done to wine"? Is there a way to alter the compounds that cause the negative flavour change in a way to reduce the flavour change. Thus we have to identify the compounds responsible for the flavour change to begin with. So what are they??? I hope this is understandable, Eddie V.

Thanks for a great post Rob.

Unfortunately, I'm not that up to date on all of the major families of compounds found in wine so I would only be guessing without further research. As for the idea about denaturing/modifying the offending compounds I do not think that you would want to do this, well at lest not completely. The reason for this is that unlike beer which is (I think, I have never made beer, my dad has though maybe I should ask him) good to drink after a few about 2 (?) months, wine need to age. Part of the aging process is the conversion of those natural compounds into oxidized/reduced/converted forms. This could bring up an interesting idea. If you could find a way to stabilize the a precise percentage of the reactive compounds, you could then just bottle your wine after a few racking (I make wine the old fashion way, no chems at all including SO2) expose it to some UVC light (ages an sterilizes, now that is to birds I can live with!) and subject it to a hot/warm water bath and voila, instant 10 year old Cab! Hemm, now only if I was a Organic Chem major and not a BioMed .

Hope this helps a little, let me know.

Rob

Sabia Vanderzeeuw wrote:

Rob,

How about stabilizing only a portion of the wine and back blending it into the unblended remainder?

BTW, that's an interesting approach you describe to quick aging a Cab. Three quick questions, if I may:

Thanks,

Mike MTM, Cokesbury, New Jersey, USA

OK let me first warn you that I have not tried this and that I do not recommend it at all. Next, if it did work well then I think it would already be used commercially. Although, it might be worth me dropping $50 for a little experiment!

OK down to business.

As for your first question, if I am reading it correctly, it would take forever for the wine to mature. The reason for this is that for certian parts of the aging process it is done by chance. IE The chance that UV light will strike a molecule that we want to undergo a favorable reaction is substantially lowered if we dropped the concentration of that molecule in the wine. What you could (theoretically) do is mix some overly matured (not oxidized) wine to some fresh wine to obtain a happy balance. This is similar to what happens to the blended wines, those who do not have a date on them. They are created in the "lab" by mixing wines to obtain a consistant result year after year. Although you could try this at home unless you know that the wine is not oxidized at all I would not suggest it.

you could use a standard mercury vapor bulb, with or with out various types of shielding. I have a UVA/B/C bulbs at home for different work any of which should be fine though I would recommend a UVB bulb. Reason is that is has more electron knocking power but you do not have to be suited up like a nuclear power station tech! My UVC bulb is a 5 watt (I think) bulb and can sterilize an area of about 2 m^2 in about 20 Seconds, not good for skin or eyes! You could also use a UV laser. Just shine the UV light at the carboloy/demi-john, not very precise, see next section.

In the aquarium trade you can buy UVC sterilization kits which is basically a tube with a UVC bulb in the center inwhich the water (or in this hypothetical scenario) wine would run through; by controlling the rate of flow you could gain a certain amount of control. A better idea is to use a UV laser with a mirror with a known reflectance and shine it into a tube flowing with wine and then control the flow for fine control.

My bet is that it would not work well since the UV light is only one aspect in the aging process. Heat, Mechanical motion (vibrations and currents in the bottle), if corked or in wood casks/demi-johns any smells/compounds in the air will penetrate into the wine in time adding to it, all of which contribute to the "aging".

With this said, I do not think that the home wine maker could artifically age wine with any form of consistant success. I would recommend that you let time take its time and not rush a good thing.

Patients is a virtue,

Rob

MikeMTM wrote: