Foamy Wine?

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Stevelaz

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I was in the basement installing a new wine rack when i dropped a bottle of 2015 Chilean Merlot. It bounced around a bit and luckily did not break. However, it did foam and stayed that way for a while. Is that normal? The wine from that batch it pretty good and does not seem gassy.

Just for the heck of it i shook a new bottle of a store bought Amarone and it also foamed in the bottle.

Also, my current batch of Chilean Merlot, that is about 9 months old that i am planning to bottle next month, foamed a bit at my last rack about 2 weeks ago, after cold stabilization. I did a taste test at that time and it is excellent to me. I also checked the sg which is at 0.992. I did the poof test with that one and did get a slight poof with a bit of foam. Is that normal? I degassed the heck out of it months ago. It does not taste gassy to me at all but im still wondering if it should be degassed again. This is a larger batch and want to make sure its right. Temp in the basement where my wine is at is about 63-65 degrees.
 
That's not unusual at all and not necessarily an indication of excess C02. All fluid will create bubbles when shaken. Even warm water will fail the poof test. Remember that CO2 at levels of up to something like 900 ppm is considered acceptable in Reds, which whites being higher. I think you have your own answer with the taste test. If it tasted fine to you then stop worrying and enjoy it. It's when I can still taste a CO2 bite to it that I get all shades of angry over degassing.
 
Mine foams the same! I use headspace eliminators for bulk aging though and a good indication that there may still be excess CO2 in the wine is when they bulb inflates after a day or two.... Normally they stay on and deflated for months.... If the bulb does inflate a couple times like that I then go back to an airlock and might splash rack under vacuum a couple times...

Cheers!
-johann
 

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