Regina Juice

If your tasting experience says Regina musts tend to produce flabby wine, then I'd go with what your taste tells you. 'Balanced' is a broad range, and even the 'trained palate' covers a range of preference. Adjusting before fermentation with tartaric acid up to 0.6 TA might give the bounce you like. Your must pH will be only a tad lower with the tartaric acid addition; nowhere near the lower end (~pH 3.3, if I recall correctly)of the 'good' range.

You could even make one or two 6 gallon containers separate from the rest, bumped up to 0.7 TA, then fermented, to see if you like that 'slightly high' acid profile. If you find it a bit acidic, blending back into the other dozen containers-worth of fermented product will give only a slight (barely tastable at best) rise of TA to the re-mixed product.

Gene

Marty Phee wrote:

Marty, I made Regina Merlot this year and my acid and pH were identical to yours. (The SG was 1.086 since yours has probably started fermenting slowly.) I got it on 10/01/05. I did not add acid at that point; I'll measure mine now and get back to you. This went through cold stabilization already as a heads up.

Regina acids tend to go up relative to TA, pH is not too predictable for me yet. I don't have enough data to say.

The > If your tasting experience says Regina musts tend to produce flabby

I never bump a Regina red beyond 5.5 g/l preferment as a heads up, it's just to acidic after fermenting for my taste. I don't do ML on them either, so that would be a good option if going that route. I'm not seeing the flabby on mine though; maybe I just prefer lighter acids or maybe Marty does ML and it drops enough malic out that it ends up flabby. These are hot climate grapes so you don't treat them exactly the same as you would must from cold climates.

Great idea but I would shoot higher on TA; maybe even go by pH and take it to 3.4 or lower. You can always cold stabilize it back out. That should really help define the flabbiness. It would be a great experiment since it's all the same must; I might blend them all together first thought to make sure the starting point is the same.

Not that I am suggesting experimenting with someone else's money...

Joe

He likes the wine, but so far I'm not a fan of it. No offense. I do like more acidic wines.

They are definitely inexpensive compared to the frozen musts I've gotten from Brehm and my local guy.

I'm going to set one pail aside and try adjusting it to see what happens. Don't want to screw up his wine.

Joe Sallustio wrote: