Floating bits. Help please

[RichardC]

Hi everyone.

SUMMARY: white, floaty bits in wine. Help.


I made a batch of portugal wine earlier this year, using Premier Classique yeast, and added 1/4 TSP metabisulphite when racking (2 time) to the 5 gallons of wine.

I bottled 10th June, which was a little early, because there seemed to be Pectic haze/ VERY fine sediment, that over a couple months, dropped a fine dusting at bottom of bottle.

Clarity was great except for minor haze however, today I decided to rack from bottle (with sediment) to another, clean bottle, and noticed floating bits in wine They are white in colour, that formed small clumps 1-2 mm in diameter. ( I did not have a hydrometer at the time but estimate, from taste, that ABV is at least 14%)

Please can you guys tell me what's wrong, where I may have gone wrong, and what to do with limited resources? This is depressing because I LOVE the flavor of this wine and can't feel comfortable sharing it if there is any chance of affecting a person's health.

I made a Sorrel wine a month before, that has a noticably lower ABV, with Sulphites added after bottling and no problems.

Thank you for any help.

Photo coming

 

[Johnd]

If you've kept up with your sulfite properly, and at 14% ABV, there's little chance that the wine is harmful in any fashion. The most probably reason is that you bottled wine that wasn't completely clear, which will typically result in some type of precipitate in the bottle. How it manifests itself depends upon the chemical makeup of the precipitate and the wine, so it's not set in stone.

Solution for this wine is to decant it through an aerator with a fine screen before serving. For future batches, never bottle wine that isn't crystal clear, white wines can take 6 months or more to clear properly.

 

[salcoco]

my first guess is it is proteins that have flocculated since you made the wines. in future add bentonite in fermentation or as a fining protocol post fermentation , it will remove the proteins.

 

[RichardC]

gosh. Thanks for the responses guys. The floating bits are a new phenomenon because a few weeks ago, I looked at the bottles and they were still clear. I also don't assume it's sediment shaken up from the bottom, because I treated all bottles the same and some didn't have anything like what's shown in the pictures.

I do have bentonite so will put some in the messy bottles and hope for the best.