I over sulphited a gallon of black currant wine to cure an infection. It seems to have worked, the wine tastes great, except for a soapy after taste. I decided to leave it for a year to blend with next years batch. Its kept in the coldest part of my flat (averaging about 14C) with a few other wines and I check them every few days. With in a space of 2 days, the wine suddenly dropped a white, cloudy sediment, about 1/4cm thick. I haven't tasted it yet, I don't want to move the bottle until the sediment has compacted a bit. Any suggestions as to what this might be? Is it sulphates dropping out of the wine?
white sediment with black currant wine
Nov 14, 2004
3 Replies
I think it is the sulphates dropping out of the wine, the soapy aftertaste has almost dissapeared. It's quite a pleasant wine now.
Surely you could not have added enough sulphite to get 1/4 in. of sediment. I think it is probably something else. Maybe Tartaric Acid falling out or maybe some zonked out yeast cells. Anyway, I am sure it is nothing to worry about. You might want to get a sulphite test kit and check the level. If it is excessively high you might aerate the wine a bit to get it down. Or give it a lot of time and it will probably drop on it's own.
Ray
After a few days it compacted right down to around 2mm thick. I work in metric, 1/4cm is less than 1/8th of an inch ;) I was more suprised at how quickly it happened. Two days before I had checked in and there was n't any visible sediment, then suddenly this layer of white sediment. The ambient temperature had dropped a fair bit over this time however.
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