Sweetening & Renewed Fermentation

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you may have wanted to say Kabinett rather than Auslese. Auslese "usually" contain more residual sugar than Spatlese (up in the 8%-10% range and can be much higher). Kabinett tends to be in the 2%-4% range (unless trocken is also on the label).

The above is a generalization because there is no law determining the amount of residual sugar left in the German QMP wines. The laws deal with the sugar level before fermentation. The amount of RS is up to the wine maker (for now).

Andy

I agree.

I agree 100%.

And we need a lot more of this. Sorry, I may have come off too strong before.

It's just that sometimes we (as a society) try to read too much into some of these studies. This includes current medical research. Sometimes we want the data to prove something that the experiment just didn't address.

Unfortunately, a lot of the experiments we really need, take 5, 10, 20 years to conduct. If the experiment isn't set up right to begin with, a lot of time can be wasted.

My Regards also,

Andy

Yes. Thank you. I lived and worked in Germany for 9 years, but that was a quarter of a century ago and I am now at the age where my memory is not what it used to be. IIRC - in ascending order of sweetness they were (are?) Kabinett, Auslese, Spatlese, Eiswine. This is based on some rather ancient records of tests I conducted on commercial wines (which is not to say that I may not be wrong in this). I have no idea what the current laws and regulations might be. Thanks again.

Yeah, this is bad advice. Ascorbic acid has no effect on yeast, and as mentioned if you have no Free SO2 it actually accelerates oxidation (especially if you have any residual copper in solution).

Wineries add ascorbic as an anti-oxidant (strange I know with whats written above) but always with plenty of Free SO2.

Rob L

snipped-for-privacy@lightlink.com

The filtered vs unfiltered debate will probably never end to everyone's satisfaction, but it's been my observation that some wines are the better for filtration and others poorer. It all depends on the specific wine in question.

On balance, however, I'd say that the optimum is to produce clean wines that do not require filtration. That's not the idealist speaking; rather the lazy pragmatist.

Unfiltered wines are subjected to less handling. I'm sure that all would agree that less manipulation required between the vine and the bottle reduces the exposure of the wine to deleterious effects of oxygen and spoilage organisms. So sayeth the pragmatist.

Less handling of the wine means more free time to surf the web, watch videos, go on vacation or simply _sleep_! That's where the lazy/leisure part comes in. :^)

Tom S