Filter or Not to filter, Sorbate and Juicy Fruit

Many of you wonder about filterin your wines and if it is necessary or will strip flavors. Here is aCopy of Cellar Dwellarsput out by Anna Kathrine Mandsfield from Cornell along with Chris Gerling and othersfor enology students and intersted people.




http://grapesandwine.cals.cornell.edu/cals/grapesandwine/outreach/enology/upload/CelDwel4.pdf


I think it will answer a lot of different question you may have.

excellent article!

Thanks for that article; very good.

Rich,

Thanks for posting. So I have been thinking about whether or not to add the Sorbate that comes in my kits. As long as they are fermented to dry and not back sweetened is it safe to leave it out? In light of the fact that I could have some bottles lying around for 2-3 years and the longer the Sorbate is in the bottle the more of a chance it has to react with either bacteria or ethanol?

Any real danger or problems as long as you have sufficient sulfite levels and it was fermented to dry and no back sweeting?

In answer to your question- I leave some of them out when doing kits- but they put it in there to be safe with their kits. Being the chemist, if you check your sulfite levels and make sure they are adequate, you probably would not need the sorbate. I use it in some and not others- depends on how safe I feel about it. I never add it to any kits I suspect as having gone through malolactic fermentation.

Can you do MLF on a kit?

Mike,


Exposure can inadvertently happen if you happen to oak in a barrel and do not filter the bacteria out of the wine before transferring to the barrel. Drop a kit into that same barrel later and the bacteria is present and while it likely won't provide the same results as with wine from whole grapes, the reaction with the sorbate becomes a concern.


Otherwise, kits are prebalanced to have a level of malic acid that is more suitable to a finished product instead of the levels that you can get in wine from whole grapes, which means that malolactic fermentation isn't an advised practice with kit wines. Given that, refer back to my first paragraph.


- Jim

Mike like Jim said, NO don't do mlf on kits. It is advised against even if not using a barrel. Now if you do an All Juice kit, from fresh juice or must, then you might do an mlf on it- depending on your acid content. If it is a red with high TA and hasn't been concentrated or balanced, then by all means go ahead and use mlb on it if you wish.

Good stuff.

Thanks!

Sorbate... I don't use it. It adds a sweetness that I don't really care for. Yeast is typically in the 1 to 2 micron size range, most of which can be eliminated by using a 1 micron gravity feed filter. Smaller yeast might get left in the wine, and yes, they can start fermenting again. In order to eliminate the vast majority of yeast you have to filter down to the .5 micron level which can strip color and flavor. Plus, it usually requires pressure or vacuum to force the wine through the filtering medium. Noisy and messy.

My wines tend to age for 5 months+, so the fermentation is usually completely done by the time I get to the bottling stage. I filter after initial clearing with a 5 micron filter, then use a 1 micron filter during the aging period or just before bottling. My results are very dependable and I don't have sorbate in the wine.

As is typical with wine making, patience pays better dividends than chemicals. Having said that, completely agree with the SO2 levels being maintained.