Steve and others,
I could have almost written your post exactly as you did and signed it, knowing that is precisely my experience with whites (gewurztraminer, riesling, pinot grigio and a variety called geisenheim). Perhaps the only exception to your post is that I have not made a serious attempt at really fine filtration. Due to the fact that I have a Buon Vino Superjet as you do, I believe we are limited to .5 microns. I will now use this routinely on my whites although the medium filter seemed to clear my wines more than adequately. I guess the real issue is stabilization.
Like you I tried the lysozyme route and had mixed results even when generous doses were used. Man does that stuff foam when added to the must!!! This year I plan to be a little more agressive with the SO2 maybe taking it up to 50 ppm's although reluctantly. My philsophy has been to minimize SO2, one of the advantages IMHO of home winemaking.
Apart from sterile filtration and the need to purchase more equipment or the use of sorbate which I do not like, I am pretty well resigned to the fact that we have oenococcus all over our cellar and about all I can do is try to minimize the problem. I rarely have ML in bottles as I bulk age my whites for at least a year in glass before bottling and if it's going to go through ML it usually happens by then.
I am purchasing a chromatography kit as there is some guesswork when a wine is fermented in our cool basement as that can drag on for a long time especially the last phase from 1.000 to 0.992.
Two questions:
1) When is it a good time to sulfite for bulk aging in whites you do not want to undergo MLF and at what levels. When I wait till the alcoholic fermentation is pretty well complete I am concerned that MLF is already underway. I usually start with juice that is in the 20ppm range at the time of yeast fermentation so I am thinking by the time the SG is around 1.000 I should probably up it to around 40 or 50 ppm's.2) I understand there is a Lalvin strain that is recommended for aromatic wines. I would be interested in any experience with this agent.
Any thoughts from the above two questions would be appreciated.
Glen Duff