WineXpert Adding Tannins to wine kits questions

[Cjk]

Hi all,

I have some questions about adding Tannins to my Wine Kits. I currently have three kits in various stages. All are in glass carboys and are waiting to be placed in a 23 liter Vadai medium toast barrel at the end of August.

WE Eclipse Pinot Noir: 4 months old
WE Eclipse Barolo: 3 months old
We Eclipse Merlot: 5 weeks old

My questions are:
What will adding tannins do?
Should I add them to my Kits in the stages they are in?
Should they be added before or after they go into the barrel?
How do you calculate how much to use?
I've read about people using Tannin Riche Extra. Is this a good option or are there better?

Sorry for the laundry list of questions. As always any advice is very much appreciated.

Chris

 

[DoctorCAD]

Pinot Noir is either not tannic or specialty tannins are used. I use rouge soft for Pinot Noir. I also use tannins in most of my reds, but I like dry wines.

P.S. the art of winemaking, there is no "list" of what to do, its up to the winemaker. Guidelines, yes.

 

[ceeaton]

I'm pretty new at this, but my thoughts are why mess with a higher end kit the first time around? You are already tweaking it by adding it to your Vadai for a period of time. Get a baseline flavor profile of the kits as they were intended by the maker the first time around, then if you think they need improving upon, add the extra tannins etc to improve your wine.

Now maybe you've made the kits you mentioned many times, if that is the case, please ignore my rantings.

 

[sour_grapes]

I mostly agree with DrCad and Craig. I do add tannins to all of my kits, but you are also adding in barrel time. How new is the barrel? If new(ish), the barrel will also add tannins to your wine.

To directly answer your questions, the conventional wisdom is that adding tannins will give more mouthfeel and pucker, at the expense of aging time that is needed to make the wine approachable. There are tannins meant to be added to wines at your stage, called cellaring tannins or aging tannins: http://www.scottlab.com/products-29.aspx. Personally, I would wait until after the barrel time to judge how that affected your wine before adding additional tannins. Tannin Riche (and/or Extra) is considered one of the finest finishing tannins there is.

 

[Cjk]

Thank you All,

I didn't think about the tannin from the barrel. The barrel will be new so after thinking about what you all wrote I think I'll wait until each batch has had some barrel time before I decide to add anything.

Chris