My White Grenache is Hazy

The top picture is the 2008 White Grenache after bottling it, and about 6 weeks of storage. The bottles all have a a white sediment. If I decant off the sediment, then the bottle develops more haziness, which gradually settles.

The lower picture is the wine as it came out of the demijohn - and it was nice and clear. It also had a phenolic taste that disappeared after bottling.

Anyway, I think there has been some oxidation or acidification that has altered the flavor and knocked something out of solution.

The wine books have several more or less practical ways to clarify wine, like gelatin or egg white. 

I am tempted to dump up the bottles into a container, add sulfite, and let it settle by itself. After some length of time, I would filter it. 

My problem is that I don't have a five gallon container that is suitable, and the wine may spontaneously start precipitating something. 

The Reducing Environment of the Wine Bottle

I bottled out the 2008 Grenache, and have tasted a significant evolution in the flavor. Since I aged the wine in glass, and bottled it in glass, the wine has almost always been in a reductive environment. Reduction here being used in the chemical sense, meaning that chemicals are stable in the wine that would not be stable in the oxidizing environment of the atmosphere. It also means that chemicals tend have a lower oxidation state -- that is have more electrons. 

I had been thinking that bitter alkaloids were being oxidized upon contact with air. 

A good reference on this is riojalta.com, where I learned a lot. Riojalta says that the reducing flavor is desireable; but I am not so sure. Also I think that the process of racking and bottling improves flavor, by allowing the wine a chance to oxidize a little. 

White Grenache Bottling

I bottled off the white grenache wine today.

I purchased new corks and washed the bottles in the dishwasher first.

The wine is light and the bitter aftertaste that it had in the last rackng is gone. I think the last racking gave it a chance to oxidize a bit.

 I wish that I could measure the redox potential of the wine, but I don't have any equipment at home. I suspect that my fermentation demijohn was a reducing environment. 

Anyway, the finished wine has a great color, and better than drinkable. In fact, I need to keep myself from drinking it so it can age a little more. 

Now I need a label that is unpretentious.