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With a cooler fermentation temp you CAN have slightly less color extraction from the skins. However you will probably be producing more "fruity" esters which are always pleasant no matter what the varietal is. The hotter your temps the more color you'll extract but the more "cooked fruit"...

Keep in mind that MLF is the process of lactic acid bacteria (oenococcus oeni) converting malic acid bacteria into lactic acid, co2, and some other goodies like diacetyl. The tartaric acid you dump in before MLF will remain after MLF. You dump in malic acid however, and it will get converted to...

I did it during an internship back in the summer of 2009. It took a little bit of practice but I got the hang of it pretty quick. After a couple hours I was able to get a node grafted on fairly quickly and about 90% of them took to the vine, if I remember right. We were grafting chardonnay onto...

Yeah true they technically are a hair higher currently but since I fermented and pressed the lots individually it could have been a number of factors. Also all the sugar numbers are so close to bone dry anyway it doesn't really matter. The fact that the early inoculation didn't stall anything...

Well here are the early results on the side by side, early bacterial inoculation for MLF. These wines have all been pressed and are in the barrel. No sulfur added as neither primary nor secondary fermentations are finished. Glucose + Fructose (g/100mL) Walla Walla Merlot no bacteria -...

Hope it all works for ya man!

Don't know about the port ideal, never done it. The restart protocol with the dilutions and mother tanks and all that is very complex I agree. I'd be weary of doing MLF with that amount of sugar left but you are definitely running out of options I suppose. The extra acid could make a sweet red...

Worth a shot if you have it on hand. The strain makes a huge difference though, and I can't vouch for that one personally.

I think your best bet is to get some stronger yeast in there asap. Ideally I'd say get the lees from an active fermentation that is just about done, because it's acclimated to the hostile, alcohol laced conditions. Since you don't have that, you're going to need to use fresh yeast. I highly...

I'm picking Riesling from Bacchus Vineyard today, going to ferment it dry. I'll let ya know how it goes.

Do you have any other fermenations going right now?

I do about 45 different lots of red each year and have had all kinds of MLF results using CH16 bacteria and various yeasts. I've always added bacteria after primary and sometimes it takes off really well and is finished in a week or two. Sometimes it takes two months. Sometimes it never takes...

I'd try putting your reds through MLF. If you made that good of wine without it, no reason to think you can't get to the next level with it. If the higher acid taste is working for you, you can always add tartaric to the finished wine later to up the acid to your taste. One thing you will not...

When aging in an oak barrel you get a lot of micro-oxygenation that happens over the 15-24 months you have your wine in there. You lose water and/or ethanol and replace it with more wine, concentrating it. Your tannins and flavors change because of these actions, giving you the oak aged wine...

Sorry I forgot to get back to this thread! We used to not sterile filter our reds, just our whites. However, now with crossflow technology available to us at very reasonable prices (35 cents a gallon) we have tried it and loved it. The upside is that you never have to worry about microbial...

Our commercial reds are around pH 3.8 on average. Sterile filtered, I set the free SO2 to 40ppm in the tank which gets us around 35ppm in the bottle. We use very dense corks that exchange very little O2.

Did it not go through malolactic fermentation when it normally does? You could mess with the acidity, which could be tricky to pull off. Also it may trade one wine fault for the other. However, since you are aging it on oak right now, you could perhaps make a "lower than normal" acidity white...

Oh man I got a performer myself last week. Been cooking on it non-stop! These things kick so much ***, I love it!

Winemaking....?

Yeah the advice about checking the actual malic acid level is pretty key. Also your wine conditions may just be the issue. Too low of a pH and too low of a temperature will do it. I've had more issues with MLF over the years than any other aspect in winemaking. Getting your wine in an acceptable...