I have been making wine from juice for many years. I retired and added grapes to the wine. I am not yet familiar with how wine from grapes tastes as it goes thru the process. I have a 54 liter demi of a nebbiolo barbera blend, that i started in September. I racked it and it tastes somewhat tart. Is that normal for wine from grapes at 4 months. I usually use juice buckets.
Early tasting notes
- Thread starter Stevew1
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BernardSmith
Senior Member
Hi Stevew1 , Do you have any way of measuring the TA of your wine? It may be too high. Certainly many (most? all?) red grapes benefit from MLF bacterial fermentation - a process , which you may know transforms malic acids (a strong acid) to the less strong lactic acid. If you have added sulfites to stabilize this wine adding MLF bacteria is not a good idea but if you have only added enough K-meta you can still add MLF bacteria.
@Stevew1, what is your taste in wines? If you are used to off-dry to sweet fruit wines, a dry red will taste tart to you, or as my dad always called it, "sour wine". In addition, during the early stages wine will continuously transform, getting better with age -- green wine is not great tasting.
@BernardSmith's point about TA is a good one, and the answer could be "both", e.g., TA is high and your taste buds are not used to what you're tasting.
@BernardSmith's point about TA is a good one, and the answer could be "both", e.g., TA is high and your taste buds are not used to what you're tasting.
I did inoculate with VP41. After 10 years of juice buckets this is my first year of adding some grapes to the wine. The first try was a blend of Cab Franc juice with about 15% Petit Verdot grapes. The second was all grapes. I'm trying to get a feel for how the wine progresses over time.
Adding red grape/ or grape skins will add tannic notes/ dehydration of the taste buds.
Other than the skins it will be similar to juice buckets, I can get high total acid northern grapes in a bucket and I can get low acid Chilean grapes in a juice bucket. So fermented taste depends on juice quality growing region, NOT the presence of crushed grapes.
Other than the skins it will be similar to juice buckets, I can get high total acid northern grapes in a bucket and I can get low acid Chilean grapes in a juice bucket. So fermented taste depends on juice quality growing region, NOT the presence of crushed grapes.
Thank you, that makes sense and fits my situation.
