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. 

Wine Flavors Introduced by Oak Aging

I am thinking about whether to treat my 2008 Merlot with oak chips, and I was interested to see this article on what chemicals are found in oak chips. To my surprise most of them have some sort of desirable flavor, with the notable exception of the trichloroanisole. I am surprised that there are trichloro compounds in wood at all. This one does not seem to have severe safety issues, but I understand it has the Champagne producers concerned about adulteration via wine corks.

Fernández de Simón and others have published the work of GC/MS work on several species of wood that are commonly used to store food and impart flavor to them. They made a lengthy list in J Agric. Food Chem 57:8 (2009). I have extracted out the most important components from American Oak that has been "toasted." There are several other wood species in the work. 

People should not be surprised to learn that wine scholars have been researching these extractives for years, and there is a lot published on them. 

The graph at right shows the relative proportions of the top ten extractives. There are many more. 

2,4,6-trichloroanisole (100 ppm)- This is the compound responsible for cork taint, and it ruins the flavor of wine even at nanogram/L levels. Smells like moldy newspaper

syringaldehyde(226 ppm), coniferaldehyde (96 ppm), sinapaldehyde (239 ppm) - vanilla related aldehydes

butyrovanillione (113 ppm) = zingerone = vanillyl acetone - also found in ginger; medicinal uses

Whiskey lactone (beta-methyl-gamma-octalactone) (32 ppm)- One of the main components of aroma in whiskey

Furfural (395 ppm) - almond-like, sometime describes as burnt; increases with the "toasting" of the oak wood

5-methyl furfural (34 ppm)- spicy, carmel-like, sweet

Racking the 2008 Merlot

I racked the Merlot today, and I was pleased at how much it had matured. There was only a small amount of sediment, which I washed out.

Based on my brother, Glenn's advice I am going to wait until fall to bottle this. In the fall, I will need the bottle.

The Merlot now tastes like Merlot with fruitiness, but also with a stringency and hardiness. It is not as fruity as Shiraz. It is not a very complex flavor though, still relatively simple. It is nice, and quite drinkable especially with food.

Of course, I don't believe that good wine should be drunk with food, since the food wrecks the flavor of the wine. Good wine should be enjoyed alone.

As mentioned below, the fermentation carboy is a reducing environment, and by racking it we let is oxidize a bit. Unlike the 2008 White Grenache, there is no bitterness.

I have not added any oak chips, which I contend are unwelcome to my palate. I did put a three tea bags in during the winter to get the tannins up. I think tea tannins are nicer than oak tannins.

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. 

2008 Merlot Wine

I racked the 2008 Merlot today. It had a great deal of sediment, and it continues to be a substantial drinkable wine. The wine is "simple" without a lot of tannin flavor, despite the treatment with tea leaves from last month.

It is free from off flavors, and should continue to develop. I am going to let it age until the end of the summer at this point. As you can see the color is dark and the clarity is limited.

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January 2011 Update
This wine was really good after a year, but at 2 years it developed an acidic favor that I found distracting. I don't know why this happened, because the bottles and corks looked OK.

There is not much of this batch left, but I intend to add 1g per 750 ml bottle of potassium carbonate to help it.

White Gernache Update

Easter is coming up, and I wanted to get another racking in. The wine is much improved from January. It is drinkable, but it still has an off-flavor that could be yeast, but might be mold. 

As in January, the off-flavor disappears if one aerates the wine. Of course I could be fooling myself, although my DW agreed. 

The color and clarity are great. As pretty as you could want. It is a little golder than standard because I topped off with some cranberry/apple juice.  The picture at right is the actual wine. I recently failed to place in a photo contest, so I am trying to come up with some entries for next year.