Removing green flavors

Lots of Burgundians do what you did, but I think they want the stems headed for brown if not brown. If yours were pretty green it may or may not be an issue. They make great wine in Burgundy; Henri Jayer is a big proponent of stems in Pinot Noir. Crushing by foot is pretty easy on the seeds, you surely cracked none of them.

You can remove tannin with egg whites or knox gelatin, but it may be too soon to do anything just yet though. You can remove tannin any time. How long was this on the skins? Getting Pinot tannic is pretty tough to do as I understand it.

The stems were very green (despite sugars at about 26 brix).

It was on stems in a cold soak for two days. After I destemmed, it sat for another three days cold soak and then I fermented in about a week. So that's roughly 12 days. I'm not so concerned about tannic structure... my biggest concern is the green flavors. My goal was to make this wine very big, tannic and relatively low acidity for blending purposes. I think I've accomplished this but my little experiment with stomping on stems has created something I want to get rid of - green.

Michael,

As I'm sure you've deduced already, it's best to be wary of leaving green stems in the must for any period of time...

My experience with this is relatively limited, but my first wine from grapes was a Pinot Noir from lower quality Oregon grapes that we picked ourselves. The wine was very light and had enormous tannins in the early months, but after 2 years of aging it's becoming amazingly smooth. It's still very light (almost a rose) but becoming very enjoyable nonetheless. It also had a bit of vegetal note to it when young, which is completely gone now.

This year I had a Merlot with a lot of green and leathery notes that from day 1 was planned to be blended with Cabernet. I went ahead and did this, and was surprised at how much of the flavour was retained. So I would definitely caution that you do blending trials to make sure you don't add too much of the green wine to any others. In my case I didn't have the time or storage options to many options anyhow, so I just gambled it would turn out OK. I'm reasonably happy, although surprised at how little those flavours diminished after being blended. I'm just hope my winemaking partner and my wife are both as pleased :-)

If you're planning on blending this purely because it's not desirable on its own -- as opposed to desiring its qualities in those other wines -- then I would sit on it for a couple of years because it's more than likely to change a lot. And you'll be able to blend at that point with somewhat more predictable long-term results.

Good Luck!

Richard

Without actually tasting the wine, I couldn't really say. Why don't you try some bench trials on the wine? Hit a bottle's worth with 1 lb/1000 gal gelatin, let it settle and see how it tastes. Of course that won't tell you how it will change with age, but it should be interesting anyway.

Tom S

Yes, lesson learned. This year, being my first, was about experimentation.

My goal was to create this wine for the purpose of boosting any wine that was a bit weak. This wine was picked at about 28 brix, sat on skins for 12 days, fermented with oak cubes, and is aging in a new French oak barrel (which costs more than the grapes). The only problem is the green flavor. It's not apallingly high but I'm not keen on introducing it to other wines. Sounds like if I can't get the green out, then just bottling it on its own and hoping it dissipates might be the plan.

Thanks.

The green flavours are most probably signs of immature flavour development in the grapes. Do you know much about the grapes and how they were grown?

Sad to hear you are using French oak barrels. The Gallo brothers (espec. E., not J.) tried those in their earlist days but surrendered them to the West Modesto Police and Sardine Posse when Reynard Gallo used a French barrel to commit certain heinous crimes. The Gallo family then replaced all barrels with used pickling vats, from Norway, and there hasn't been a problem with green flavors (nor with Reynard) since.

Although it's a cool climate site, I have 4 other barrels made from grapes picked from the same vineyard two weeks earlier and none of them exhibits this flavor. This was the only barrel that included stems. I'm almost certain that this is from the stems.

...Michael

"Yes, lesson learned. This year, being my first, was about experimentation."

Mike,

That says it all. Like everyone else is saying, be patient. Wine right out of the press tastes nothing like what it will in a year or 2. I have a chambourcin that last year at press time was so bad I thought I'd be pouring it down the drain. This year, a year on Stavin beans later and just plain sitting there for another year, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can either fine it or let it sit another year and see what happens. I'm opting for the latter. Wine is very un-american, there is no such thing as instant self-gratification when you are a wine maker so you need to be VERY patient. "good wine takes time"

Bob

Yep, be very patient with Chambourcin. This has been my experience. A little oak and 3 or 4 years makes a BIG difference.