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sauvignon blanc

I'm making Sauvignon Blanc for the first time, from frozen must from Peter Brehm. I fermented cool and It has been going a long time. One of the carboys appears to be settling its yeast load, so I suspect the sugar fermentation is over. The larger demijohn is colored so I can't see the change in color, but suspect it is mostly over. The specific gravity is pretty low and hard to be very accurate with.

I know that I want to get the wine off most of the lees and sulfited. How important is this? Can it sit on the lees for a bit? Is that good? I've stirred the lees a couple of times. What is the best practice here?

TIA

Dan

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Dan Emerson
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It depends a lot on the style of wine you're making. If you're emulating New Zealand SB or Sancerre you probably want no ML, no oak and no extended lees contact. That would mean racking at dryness from the gross lees, keeping the pH down and the SO2 up.

OTOH, if you're making a "poor man's Chardonnay", you would have oak in the fermenter during (and following) primary, low SO2, moderate pH and maybe extended lees contact.

And you can do things in-between those extremes. Your call. That's one of the interesting things about winemaking. You can give two winemakers the

*exact* same starting point and have very different wines at bottling.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

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