I have a simple question that has been bugging me. How come a wine bottle once opened, lasts about 4 hours and then starts to taste oxidized, but a bulk aging carboy can be opened repeatedly for testing and re-reracking, without effecting the wine? This has always confused me.
simple question about oxidation
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Look at the ratio of volume to headspace in comparison of an open half empty bottle of wine and and open carboy with 6 gallons of wine in it. The head space is about the same in both but the volume in the carboy is ~30 times that of the bottle of wine so it will take much more air and time to have the same cause and effect.
winemaker_3352
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Welcome aboard!!!
I agree as well.
I agree as well.
I get the headspace thing
I get that a carboy oxidizes much more slowly. But it seems like an open bottle of wine is dramatically changed over a short period of time, yet a 6g carboy improves with a little oxidation. It also seems like the oxidation in a 6g carboy really doesn't continue once opened.
Think of it this way: You can't open a commercial bottle of wine, even if you gas it, without it going bad within 4 hours up to maybe a week if properly gassed. YET you can bottle from a carboy, mixing with O2, and put it in 750ml bottles, and they merely improve?? There's something so chemically wrong with this process and I can't figure it out.
Maybe newer wines can take the O2, but commercial wines have already seen their share of O2 and opening them tips the scale?
I don't know. There's something I'm missing and I'm afraid if I even taste test my carboy, the wine is going to sour within 2 weeks.
I get that a carboy oxidizes much more slowly. But it seems like an open bottle of wine is dramatically changed over a short period of time, yet a 6g carboy improves with a little oxidation. It also seems like the oxidation in a 6g carboy really doesn't continue once opened.
Think of it this way: You can't open a commercial bottle of wine, even if you gas it, without it going bad within 4 hours up to maybe a week if properly gassed. YET you can bottle from a carboy, mixing with O2, and put it in 750ml bottles, and they merely improve?? There's something so chemically wrong with this process and I can't figure it out.
Maybe newer wines can take the O2, but commercial wines have already seen their share of O2 and opening them tips the scale?
I don't know. There's something I'm missing and I'm afraid if I even taste test my carboy, the wine is going to sour within 2 weeks.
shoebiedoo
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I'm not sure I agree with that statement. I've decanted wine for several hours before consuming go improve it. but you're right, you must finish it with in a few days. but hours?
MitchellR
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In my opinion when you open a bottle of wine if its at room temperature I believe the combination of air and the temperature will make the wine go bad. A carboy has a small airspace to begin with if its filled near the top. So opening it for a short period of time should do no harm since it may be putting out very small amounts of CO2 anyway. If I open a bottle of wine and don't drink it all I keep it in good shape by limiting the air exposure and recapping or recorking, laying the bottle on its side so the wine is touching the cap or cork and keeping it in the fridge. The combination of cold temperatures and lack of air will keep it in fairly good shape till its consumed shortly in the future.
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BlueRidgeBilly
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so what is the answer for people who buy a gallon of wine like we do. We drink it in about a week. It is not the best wine anyway so we keep drinking it until we drink the gallon up. I was thinking about storing my wine in gallon jugs but maybe this is a case for bottling the wine rather that storing it in gallon jugs.
Well, you could bottle. You can also use gas displacement, but that's wasteful on a gallon.
Depending on what you buy, I'd say look to boxed wine. There are some really good vineyards producing boxed wine (it's not just for soccer moms and winos anymore!), and the packaging itself is designed to keep the wine "fresh" for weeks. You could also, in theory, reuse the bag from a boxed wine; I haven't tried to do this, but if you squeezed out all the air I don't see why it wouldn't work exactly the same refilled...
Depending on what you buy, I'd say look to boxed wine. There are some really good vineyards producing boxed wine (it's not just for soccer moms and winos anymore!), and the packaging itself is designed to keep the wine "fresh" for weeks. You could also, in theory, reuse the bag from a boxed wine; I haven't tried to do this, but if you squeezed out all the air I don't see why it wouldn't work exactly the same refilled...
cpfan
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Depending on the neck of the bottle you may be able to use a wine saver to remove the air from the jug. But I doubt that the stopper will fit tightly.
I used to know a guy who had some bottles and tasting corks. He poured the excess wine from his gallons into the bottles and inserted the tasting corks. The wine saver would work if one of these bottles wasn't full.
Here's a link to one brand on Amazon. Be warned that this brand's stoppers work better on cork finish bottles than Stelvin-style screw cap bottles. One winery near here has switched to another brand because of this.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GA3KCE/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Steve
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Perception varies. You may be more sensitive than most.
Taste varies too. I think my wines taste best at least an hour after opening. I generally open my wines and let them sit uncorked or decanted for that long before drinking them. They still taste fine at four hours. I'll generally consume an entire bottle within six hours, so I'm not sure how they hold up long term.
But like you, I don't really understand the oxidation thing. I would think that racking after degassing would result in more oxidation than what actually occurs, but it doesn't seem so.
Cruise---Actually, one of the best ways to oxidize wine is to repeatedly open the carboy for tasting and too much racking. We've been making wine 23 years, won many blue ribbons, Best of Show, etc. We make lots of wine every year---and once we rack to the secondary, it only gets racked off the lees ONE TIME---never gets its airlock removed for tasting. It sits and ages, and then tasted when we feel we are close to bottling.
Once you no longer have the protection of pressure from the CO2 from fermentation, the risk of oxidation goes up. PLUS, it's possible you don't have a good protective amount of SO2. If you're new to winemaking and don't quite understand how much SO2 you need in your wines, you should get an SO2 test kit and test the level. 50 PPM is a decent level.
The WAY you rack can also inject too much O2 into the wine. Don't splash rack--which means keeping the hose ABOVE the liquid going into the carboy. Be sure to get the hose under the liquid as soon as you get enough in the carboy you're racking into to prevent oxygenation.
We can open a bottle, put a tasting cork in it, put in frig and come back to it 2 weeks later and it's fine. Your small sample of the wine in the bottle is proving to you that the entire carboy truly IS oxidized. Not ALL oxidation is a bad thing---slight oxidation has a nice, nutty flavor to it and is something that is done on purpose with tawny port. It only gets aweful when it's too much.
Most oxidation is due to not enough SO2, very bad "clean" technique, not topping up, too much racking and tasting. It's more of a problem of technique and is something you want to get nailed down so that it stops happening.
Once you no longer have the protection of pressure from the CO2 from fermentation, the risk of oxidation goes up. PLUS, it's possible you don't have a good protective amount of SO2. If you're new to winemaking and don't quite understand how much SO2 you need in your wines, you should get an SO2 test kit and test the level. 50 PPM is a decent level.
The WAY you rack can also inject too much O2 into the wine. Don't splash rack--which means keeping the hose ABOVE the liquid going into the carboy. Be sure to get the hose under the liquid as soon as you get enough in the carboy you're racking into to prevent oxygenation.
We can open a bottle, put a tasting cork in it, put in frig and come back to it 2 weeks later and it's fine. Your small sample of the wine in the bottle is proving to you that the entire carboy truly IS oxidized. Not ALL oxidation is a bad thing---slight oxidation has a nice, nutty flavor to it and is something that is done on purpose with tawny port. It only gets aweful when it's too much.
Most oxidation is due to not enough SO2, very bad "clean" technique, not topping up, too much racking and tasting. It's more of a problem of technique and is something you want to get nailed down so that it stops happening.
They are corks that you can buy at a wine supply shop to put into a bottle instead of trying to shove the original cork back in the bottle. They have a plastic top on them to grab ahold of and don't fit as tightly as a cork so that they are easy to remove by hand. We use them for left-over wine in a bottle. (Left-over wine? What the heck is THAT.)
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wine storage vs oxidation
this is all craziness. I'm telling you, after a few hours it tastes sour if you have any kind of pallet. Even those gas systems really don't stop this. I'm not sure why I'm so sensitive to it. BUT the mystery of why nothing happens to a carboy remains.
But to the wine storers: Just buy 5 bottles of gallon wine. Dump them in a carboy and put an airlock on it. And then, somehow, according to this magic system, it will not only stay good, it will improve and you can rerrack it town the road.
i'm still confused.
this is all craziness. I'm telling you, after a few hours it tastes sour if you have any kind of pallet. Even those gas systems really don't stop this. I'm not sure why I'm so sensitive to it. BUT the mystery of why nothing happens to a carboy remains.
But to the wine storers: Just buy 5 bottles of gallon wine. Dump them in a carboy and put an airlock on it. And then, somehow, according to this magic system, it will not only stay good, it will improve and you can rerrack it town the road.
i'm still confused.
I can't offer an answer because I also find it confusing, but I have to admit that I've rarely had an opened bottle of wine last me more than six hours. I mean, you have to drink really slowly to stretch a mere 750ml of fluid out that long. In between pours, unless I've decanted, I evacuate some of the air using a Vacu-Vin and store the bottle in the fridge. If it's too cold when I pour it, I just warm it in my hands a bit. It's a foolproof system, which can be summarized thusly: If you open the bottle, drink it. NOW.
Anyway, the method you describe in your hypothetical about dumping several gallons of wine into a carboy is not something anyone would do. You'd carefully siphon the wine so as to minimize contact with oxygen. Splash racking (dumping the wine in) will certainly expose it to more oxygen. But this is a rather unrealistic scenario in any case. Who in their right mind is going to unbottle 5 or 6 gallons of bottled wine and put it back into a carboy?
By the way, you can always bottle your wine in 375ml bottles.
Edit: I do hope we get a solid answer to your question. I think it's a good one (in the op). Perhaps it really just has to do with the volume of wine relative to the surface area it has to act on.
Anyway, the method you describe in your hypothetical about dumping several gallons of wine into a carboy is not something anyone would do. You'd carefully siphon the wine so as to minimize contact with oxygen. Splash racking (dumping the wine in) will certainly expose it to more oxygen. But this is a rather unrealistic scenario in any case. Who in their right mind is going to unbottle 5 or 6 gallons of bottled wine and put it back into a carboy?
By the way, you can always bottle your wine in 375ml bottles.
Edit: I do hope we get a solid answer to your question. I think it's a good one (in the op). Perhaps it really just has to do with the volume of wine relative to the surface area it has to act on.
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Some commercial wine bottlers flush all the air out of the wine bottle and replace it with nitrogen just before they fill it with wine. In this case, there is no air at all on top of the wine.
If you open a bottle of wine, but don't drink any of it, the wine level will remain the same. If you turn right around and re-cork it, the wine in the bottle won't necessarily oxidize. Oh, maybe some of the head space in the bottle might have been something besides air, as in my example above. In this case you replaced the head space in the bottle with plain old air. This could have a very slight affect, but not much.
Remember when you open a carboy and take a taste, the level in that carboy won't change more than 1/4 inch. If it should change more, one is likely to top off that carboy. In these cases, the level is pretty much the same, so no greater percentage of oxygen is present after than before opening it.
Also, the percentage of air in that properly topped off carboy is very low, compared to the percentage of head space in a typical bottle of wine. The idea here is to keep that carboy topped off; an opened bottle is left only partially filled. I figure if you opened a bottle of wine, took out a glass, topped the bottle off again, and recorked it, it would last much longer.
I personally, except for some strong ports, have never been able to keep an opened, partially filled bottle of wine for more than a day. Even if I use a vacu-vin on it and suck as much air out as possible, it still tastes more oxidized the next day. Even if it is refrigerated.
Most homemade wine is pretty forgiving, where oxidation is concerned. I have really abused it in the past, especially when I was new at making wine and was trying to degas the stuff. But as already mentioned, for a really nice wine, care must be taken if you want to keep it around more than about years. Fortunately, (unfortunately??) most homemade wine doesn't last that long, anyway.
Now let me really confuse you. I don't know why it is, but most homemade wine seems to require more decanting in order to come around, as compared to commercial wine. Thirty minutes is good for a lot of commercial wines, but at least for the wines I have made, they do much better if they are decanted for 4 hours or more.
I would get too concerned about oxidation. If you follow the kit instructions, yours should be fine.
BlueRidgeBilly, I too live in the Blue Ridge Mtn's. [ the end of them anyway] I used to buy 3L & 4L JUGS [C.R.] to drink while our wine matured. 1. there is nothing wrong with cheap wine, if you NEED the JUGS. 2. a gal. never lasted us a week for us, maybe 4 days. [never noticed oxidation, but kept in Frig.] 3. I still "bottle" my better wines in 3L jugs, fill them up, screw them tight & I add a wax bath, to make sure they are sealed. then I let them age,[sometimes years] & bottle later or we just drink out of the 3L jug [OK we do use glasses, most times] It's a Mountain Thing! Soooo do what works for YOU! Roy
