dry airlock and white skin

[cervenyc]

Hi All,

I was just down in the cellar and noticed that the airlock in my lemberger went dry. Who knows for how long, maybe months.... anyway, the top of the wine is covered in a dusty white skin that looks bacterial. I poked my thief in there to taste the wine and the skin sort of moved with it. The wine still tastes fine...

So what should I do? When I saw it I thought the wine must be ruined, but it tastes fine. Should I rack it and toss in some more sulfites? Or is it better to just leave it alone?
I also brew beer and thought it could be part of the malolactic fermentation, but haven't seen others describe this in wine.

Thanks. I'm brand new to this.

 

[djrockinsteve]

Myself, I would try to siphon off the top layer and all the white stuff as possible. Rack it and add some Pot. Meta. Even do a sulphite test to see how much you could add.

Let it age a bit more with no head space and a filled airlock. Sample later and hopefully it will be good and don't tell anyone.

 

[cervenyc]

Thanks for the tips. I'll give that a try this afternoon.

I don't have a sulphite test. Should I just do 1/4 tsp and hope it works? I guess a little extra sulphur beats 5 gallons of spoiled wine. So maybe 1/2 tsp?

 

[djrockinsteve]

Is there a local wine shop that you could talk to them about this and maybe they could do a test for you just to be good customer service?

Shouldn't do this blindly especially since we don't have your recipe and timeline.

 

[Minnesotamaker]

That stuff floating on top could also be "Mother of vinegar". Do a search on making home-made vinegar and see if the description matches what you have. Home made vinegar ain't all a bad thing.