These wines drinkable?

Robin - About the worst that can happen to wine in a situation like this is that it can turn to vinegar if it is exposed to enough air. If it smells like wine and not like vinegar, it should be safe to drink. Nothing hazardous to your health can grow in wine, assuming an alcohol level of 10% or greater (which is pretty likely). So if it smells good enough to drink, it should be safe to do so. I would replace the old cork and bung with new ones, though.

The other question is whether to try to deal with the haze. Most wines will clear on their own, given enough time. It's a little surprising to me that both of these wines are still hazy after 20+ years. I guess I would try the usual line-up of treatments, one at a time, and give each one at least a few weeks to a month, to see if it has been effective. First, probably, pectic enzyme. Then bentonite, then sparkolloid, and finally one of the two-part clearing packages (e.g., Super-Kleer). One of them should work. The haze is really just a cosmetic issue, though. If it doesn't bother you, you needn't do anything to deal with it.

Best of luck, and happy fermenting --

Doug

I syphoned off a couple of bottles of the damson, which turned out to be quite clear in the glass, and produced it at my parents' wedding anniversay yesterday, where it went down very well, in both senses.

As for the other, hazy one, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the type of haze you find in old wines will never settle -- a protein haze?

Bottle the rest of it! Don't leave a carboy with a few bottle's worth of wine take out- the oxygen in the dead space will ruin the rest of the batch!

Yes, if you have started to take wine out of the carboy, you need to either top it up somehow, or bottle the rest of it. Leaving wine in a half-full container will ruin it within a few days or weeks.

If you have wine with a protein haze, bentonite should be effective. Proteins tend to have positively charged particles, which bind with the negatively charged particles in the bentonite. The trick with bentonite is to rehydrate it properly. Sprinkle the bentonite slowly into a small amount of water or wine (a cup or so should do) while stirring constantly. Then let it rest for a few hours and stir it up again before adding to the wine. If you add a lot of bentonite to water all at once, it will form a big clay-like mess, which is difficult to deal with.

Doug

It doesn't even have to be down to half-full to be ruined. I once took a single glass' worth of wine out of a 1-gallon batch to see if it was worth keeping. It was fine when I tried it, but not the next week when I had time to bottle it.

Thanks very much for that tip, I'd no idea, also to Doug re bentonite.