Temperature of red wine

Yes indeed. Red wine will taste different at the temperature ranges you mentioned. I belive most people will find that red wines in the 50 - 55 temperature range taste better to them for red wines. I am not sure how temperature relates to taste of tannins but even with whites, the cooler the temperature, the more acidic the wine will taste and the more "fruity".

"Room Temperature" has a different meaning today than it did in the old days without the modern heating systems we have today. Try some of your whites at different temperatures and see if you can tell the difference also.

Good reds and whites: 14C - 16C Young fruity reds, rosés, and dry whites: 11C - 12C Sparkling: 7C - 8C Dessert Wines: 6C

Chilling a wine, reduces your ability to taste it. Too warm and it will seem flat. Then again, wines are like steaks. No one can tell you the right way to serve it (well done, rare), or what is the best temp to serve wines, for you. Learn the rules, and then you can break them ;O)

I like your quote at the bottom

Paul

Thanks for the comments. I think that my problem with this red wine is that I have got an excess of tannin.I thought that it would become more mellow after three years in a glass demijohn,but although it has coated the glass with a thin red deposit,there has been no deposit in the bottom of the demijohn.The grapes were very ripe when picked (Brix 18.5 which about the best we get in our cool climate),but possibly a little low on acid.The wine has a good fruity nose,its colour is deep red and clear,but that is about the best one can say-the taste gets better on the second or third glass,but presumably all wines do due to the alcohol kicking in.It is somewhat better than a supermarket wine at 8 dollars a bottle,my friends at a recent dinner party liked it and my daughter gives it 9/10.However,I feel that I need more understanding of what I perceive to be wrong,in order to improve it. Michael

Try this:

Next time you open a bottle, pour out a glass and drink it and save the rest in the opened bottle until the next day. Test to see how the remaining wine in the bottle taste the next day - or two days. If it is a lot better taste to you, then your wine will improve with age - it just needs more time.

Have you checked out the site:

There are a LOT of us there and it is very active with a lot of good topics and opinions. I am known as PEL on the site. You can also post pictures which sometimes help a lot in the conversations. They have been having problems with their server but it has been fairly stable recently.

Paul

Michael,

You need to rack it more. Just keep> >

All things being equal, red wines don't age well in glass. If it is just the tannins that are bothering you, egg white fine, 2 egg whites/60 gal. (don't beat them stiff). Otherwise, your wines are stable now. All the microorganisms in the wine are now history. It seems a waste to throw that away. Re-fermenting seems like a very bad idea, a very bad idea, indeed.

If it is a light red wine, and not too tannic, you can follow doublesb's suggestion of racking, but do a gentle racking. Most Côtes du Rhône are tank wines (large bottles) that are meant to be drunk young. Barrel aged wine gets its' oxygen from being "topped" every three months or so, to fill up the ullage from evaporation through the wood. My experience is that the more you leave a wine alone, the better it is. Of course, there are times that you need to intervene, but the fewer times they are opened and exposed to the air, the better.

Yes,it does get a little better when left in an opened bottle for a day or so.The wine is already 3 years old,but perhaps it is not maturing very fast in glass.What surprises me is that I do not get a tannin deposit on the bottom of the glass demijohn.That is why I have not deemed it necessary to rack it-all I see is a deposit on the inside of the glass.Perhaps red wine does need more air (which it would get if maturing in oak),so perhaps I will rack some more to introduce some oxygen to help with maturation.I assume that I add a small amount of sulphite(30ppm) on each racking,though I thought that red wine (unlike white wine)does not need it due to its tannin . Thanks again Michael

All wines need SO2, unless you're making vinegar (little is needed below pH3). 30ppm is about the max. free SO2 that you want. If you add 30ppm to each racking, the wine will be undrinkable. Polymerization of tannins is a slow oxidation. Exposure to the air is will lead to rapid oxidation

---> acetic acid ---> acetaldehyde ---> big waste of time, effort, money.

Wildbill,

I've never experienced oxidati> In article

BTW,

Adding 30ppm SO2 to a non-sulfited wine will not leave 30ppm FREE SO2. Think about it, most of it will bind with the oxygen during racking.

Michael,

When you leave it in an opened bottle, is it a full bottle? IOW, is it full up into the neck? If it is, that won't do much to aerate the bottle. The surface area isn't big enough to have much effect on the volume of wine in the bottle. That's why wine is filled up into the neck in the first place, Take the bottle and pour it vigorously into a glass pitcher and leave it over night and drink it the next night, 24 hrs. Don't worry, it won't go bad, in fact it'll get much better.

Here is some information I have found:

The California Wine Institute proposes an upper limit of 175 ppm for reds and 225 ppm for whites

The FDA allows up to 350 ppm

I believe they are referring to Total SO2

From what I have read, depending on pH of course, up to about 60 - 70 ppm, about half will be bound. Beyond that the bound becomes less - maybe about a third or less will become bound.

I won't argue with you about your experiences. I'm just saying that around 100ppm free SO2 (FSO2), some say less, the wine will give you a headache, and if you are an asthmatic, shove you into an attack.

In winemaking In low concentrations SO2 is mostly undetectable in wine, but at over

Additionally, SO2 will bleach your wine, striping out the purple hues in reds, and make whites look like water. This is one of the reasons for using as little as is needed.

Not all wine oxidation is mediated by acetobacter, direct molecular oxidation can happen as well. It seems from your statement, that you think you could leave wine in an open pot, and it would be perfectly fine, as long as it had FSO2. This is not the case. You will get spoilage from direct oxidation and aerobic organisms.

If you can't taste the difference, there is no need to change your habits.

Thanks for all of your comments. My general summary of what I have learned is that maturation in glass is a slower process than in oak where the barrels let air in slowly.My observation that the taste is a little better from a half-filled bottle the day after opening does suggest that some oxidation at this stage does help the flavour.This particular vintage was rather low on acid,and I am also wondering if this could effect the overlying tannic taste. I do rack my red wine once after fermentation (say in November),when I add 30ppm, and then once again after about another six months,adding a further 30ppm.I then leave it for a couple of years or so,though do sample a tiny amount from time to time,which does let in a small amount of air.Perhaps I should rack off one more time,but I am nervous about the addition of too much sulphite,since my wife does suffer from headaches after drinking a couple of glasses of commercial red wine,but never with my own reds. Michael P.S.I did an experiment recently to see whether one needs to stir in added sulphite or just add it and let it disperse.This was for cider making,but it is very relevant here. I took two water filled 5 litre glass demijohns,and added a teaspoon (5ml) of water soluble Watermans ink (yes,I still have some and use it for writing now and again).This is the ratio of volumes that I use when adding sulphite.Due to gravity of the fall (a couple of centimetres),the ink gained velocity and formed a jet which sank to the bottom.A few stirs on one of the demijohns gave a completely uniform colour. In the unstirred demijohn,however, the colouring reached a uniform colour in the lower third of the vessel only ,and clear water still in the upper two thirds even after a few hours.Now a couple of months after doing the experiment,the unstirred demijohn is showing very very slow dispersion,with the blue colouring only just up to half way.My feeling is that it would take at least a year(or two)before the colouring became uniform. Of course,if there was a slow fermentation going on the dispersion would speed up,but this experiment has proved to me that it is very necessary to stir in added sulphite for it to be effective in the total volume.This result surprised me so much that I went around this years stored wine and gave them each a stir! My lack of stirring in previous years winemaking may have some bearing on my problems with the 2006 Regent wine above,although there have been no suggestion of vinegary taints ever.

The oxygen comes in with the topping wines. The water and ethanol evaporate out of the barrel via the veins (phloem and xylem) in the wood.

The procedure is called "breathing" the wine. Remove half a glass of red wine from the bottle to (thus increasing the surface area of the wine) and let the bottle stand, without the cork, for 2 to 4 hours. There may be an interaction between the air and the wine, and there is a de-gassing of compounds that mask the flavor and smell of the wine. Most dry table wines will retain their quality for about 12 hours, and then start to deteriorate.

Good experiment :O)