Time in a bottle

Phil,

Bottle shock is one of those things that when you first hear about it sounds like a fable. But once you experience it, you'll be a believer. I won't say that 6 months additional aging is needed, but try a taste of your wine as you bottle it, and again after one week in the bottle, and you should be able to taste the difference. Let it go another month and it should be back to being the lovely wine you tasted off of your carboy. Another thing that seems like a fable but isn't is the saying "wine doesn't travel well". Drive from VA to NJ with a few bottles of your favorite meads and wines for your in-laws, and open one that evening, and you'll taste the difference from the bottle you opened the night before. Bring those same bottles up and sneak them into their wine rack and open them in six week when you're next visiting, and they will present much better.

The actual times can differ, but there is a difference. My bulk aged wines turn out better than the short bulk/long bottle aged wines.

Right after bottling, don't drink it for at least a few weeks. I don't know what causes the difference with "bottle shock" but it is real from my experience. If you are giving the wine for Christmas, bottle it by early to mid November. Oh, some of those wines that taste fantastic now, will still be better in six or twelve months.

Wine ages in two different ways and each type of aging changes the wine in a different manor. Bulk aging takes place in large storage containers, and small amounts of air are present each time the bung is removed. So, bulk aging involves oxygen-wine interactions. Bottle aging takes place after the wine is bottled. Here, no air is present, so oxygen is not involved. This is reductive aging, and "bottle bouquet" develops under reductive conditions. Most high quality, dark red table wines are bulk aged from one to three years. After bottling, these wines are aged in the bottle for a year or more specifically to develop a bottle bouquet. Very tannic red wines often require several years of bottle aging to reach maturity. Heavier white wines are usually bulk aged for several months and then aged in the bottle for an additional time. Wines are always exposed to air and oxidized to some extent at bottling time. The oxygen gives wine a flat taste and the condition is called bottle shock. Several weeks or months may be needed for the wine to recover to it's original condition. Then after the bottle shock is gone, several more months are often required to develop bottle bouquet. Adding the proper amount of sulfur dioxide at bottling time can reduce bottle shock considerably. Lum Del Mar, California, USA

At my last transfer, I had a couple of cloudy liters at the bottom of the carboy that I couldn't bear tossing out so I actually bottled the top cloudy liter. That was last week. I expect I would taste bottle shock in that one if I popped it open now.

Another thing that

Oh I believe that, I'm new to wine (cherry wine is my very first batch) but I've been brewing beer for quite some time now. When I travel to fellow home brewers' houses for home brew exchanges, I always say that they have the, "Home field advantage" because they are delicately picking out a bottle from their cellar, opening it, and decanting it into the glass. I on the other hand have had my beer bouncing around in the car going from cellar temp to room temp or warmer. Yep, it sure does taste better straight from my cellar into a glass.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll now have a good converstion starter when I meet up with the vinters from my village. I'll have to ask them what they think.

In my area Dornfelder is the king of the Reds, (now guess where I am;-) I would assume that this is NOT a tannic dark grape variety?

Phil et al.,

I think Phil brings up a very valid issue. As Lum pointed out, wines may undergo oxidative ageing when small amounts of oxygen are exposed to wine. He rightly said that "bottle bouquet" develops under reductive conditions, such as occurs when a wine has been in bottle for some time.

But the thing about ageing in large inert vessels (e.g. glass carboys

- as opposed to wooden barrels) is that they do not offer much with regards to small steady oxygen exposure. The wine doesn't get much oxygen until a racking, and at racking (unless conducted under protective atmosphere) it gets a huge oxygen hit - the same kind of hit that leads to bottle sickness in recently bottled wines!

Since bottle bouquet only develops in a reductive environment, there seems little point in bulk ageing for extended periods in an inert vessel (especially when you are going to rack in future and thus bring the bulk wine back towards a more oxidative state). (I'm assuming "bulk ageing" beyond that necessary for natural clarification here.) At least as far as aromatic development is concerned, if you're ageing in inert vessels, there seems little point in delaying bottling.

True. You could be in Germany, but I'd guess the UK.

Flames? ;-)

Ben

What can you do to prevent this while you travel?

Read what others have written about racking:

From Phil Melillo:

Rack big reds as little as possible. Make big red wines with all the solids and phenolics that you can get, and let the wine soften with age. Leave on lees as long as possible and disturb the wine as little as possible if the wine is healthy.

Smell every week and taste every 2 weeks or so. If you taste too much or too little of something then do some testing.

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From Keith Pritchard

Racking? What's that?

Well actually I do know. Reds I rack after pressing in about 2 years. Whites depending on the style maybe once after 2 months or when I am ready to fine, cold stabilize and bottle. I don't believe that if you have a good clean fermentation that racking is neither necessary nor actually desirable. The trick is to sulfite heavily initially, give adequate nutrition to the bugs and whites should be started with optically clear juice.

Joe O'Neal wrote: «Are you saying that you rack your whites only once and then bottle them at about 2 months old after fining and cold stabilizing?

And reds you rack at pressing and then again two years later?

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Keith Pritchard

Whites: Some I will rack together after 2 months if from separate lots. Otherwise it may be a couple of years or more before I rack. I have even just stirred in the finings on top of the gross lees (on them for several years) and cold stabilized then.

Reds: They go from the press into tank or barrel and are not even opened the first year, at the end of a year I top the barrels, check them out (haven't lost one yet in barrel), sulfite it and forget till next year when I need the barrels and then rack into tank to blend and let sit till I need the wine.

From Tom S:

My 2001 Pinot Noir is still sitting on the "dust" from the initial racking. I'll probably give it a light shot of bentonite, rack a couple of months later and bottle it.

My 2001 Chardonnay is still sitting on its gross lees from fermentation and fining. I'll bottle it when it becomes clear enough. I age reds with less of the lees than whites.

I believe that better wines come from minimal handling. In the past, I found that wines that I got too "busy" with often suffered for it. In the absence of H2S problems, all wine needs is adequate sulfite levels and topping up until it's nearly time to bottle.

NOTE: I can't recall when Tom wrote the above!

HTH, Guy

That being said, I think I'll bottle at the end of the Oct. then. That way, the wine will have been in the bottles for 2 months before I give some out for Christmas presents. I was planning on bottleing at the end of November, but it's already pretty clear and I don't see any sediment on the bottom. By the way you guys are talking, two months will be better than one to reduce the effects of bottle shock.

Ben no flames. You hit the nail on the head. I'm in the middle of Rheinhessen. Only a couple of miles from Nierstein and Oppenheim. I talked to a couple of vinters here that said they use a grape variety called 'Dunkel felder' for coloring their reds. They only plant a few rows and don't do a base wine of Dunkelfelder. Have you ever heard of this grape type?

Ben, this is very strange coming from you.

Bulk aging is not done for the development of bottle bouquet, but for the evolution of chemical processes that began when ethanol was introduced into a "soup" of phenols, acids, proteins, etc. containing a small amount of oxygen. One allows this evolution to continue for a time, and then bottles the wine to set into motion a different set of reactions. You can skip the first set of reactions if you want, but be aware of what you are doing.

The vessel itself may be inert, but the wine inside is not. Some oxygen is already in it and more is introduced at intervals when the wine is inspected or, if aged sur lie, the lees are stirred. Such moments need not necessarily result in "...a huge oxygen hit...," but undoubtedly do more often than not. As you alluded, a protective atmosphere of inert gas would prevent this.

If all you care about is "aromatic development," then by all means bottle early. From your many previous posts I had always assumed you were after a wine's maximum potential, which certainly involves more than aromatic development. Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

Yes. As you say, it's mainly used for colour enhancement of other wines and isn't considered to be of much interest in its own right.

Near Nierstein and Oppenheim hey? Got access to any decent Riesling or Silvaner (or even Scheurebe)? That'd be nice ;-)

Ben

P.S. No flames yet, no, even though I'm proposing against one of the most commonly recommended procedures for wine in amatuer winemaking circles (i.e., extended bulk ageing in inert vessels).

Hi: The difference between bulk aging and bottle aging is that in the latter, you have a higher surface to volume ratio. There are wall reactions that affect the taste of wine. Joe 07$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...

Tons of Silvaner here. That is my wife's favorite wine. Ditto with Riesling. I'm not much of a Scheurebe fan. I was in a restaurant last night in our village,

The 2003 dry silvaner is much more fruity than you would expect. Good stuff.

A higher surface to volume ratio?? What's that mean?

What's a 'Wall' reaction? So walls affect the taste of wine? I thought walls were something I bounce off of after drinking wine:-)