Have you ever done the lab work on a store bought bottle?

[David Engel]

Hi All,

As I prepare for my first real year of attempting to make wine from my own Merlot grapes, I just opened a bottle of Merlot from my favorite commercial winery and thought “what is the ph, the acidity and the brix". Has anyone taken these measurements from a store bought wine? Couldn’t hurt to learn how to use the lab equipment could it?

Dave

 

[Rice_Guy]

There are a lot of commercial wines in the data set. All in all I would say the big guys are fairly uniform and the small local tasting room wineries have as much variation as folks in the Vinters club.

A guideline for where to balance TA on wine;
after club contest this year I collected eight first place wines which are the red triangles
View attachment 81200
The sample set "cloud" is primarily commercial wines, with some collected in the vinters club and here on WineMakingTalk
NOTE: TA is one of several quality traits which a first place wine has as absence of flavor defect, appropriate aroma for the variety and clarity , , , etc.
NOTE 2: this is an easy test, if ya'll are interested in your wine ,,, PM me

Cider products have more variability than country wines.
I haven’t needed to post this on WMT. By now I have looked at probably three times as many wines that got a first (blue) in a contest.
In general, food industry folks spend lots of time comparing their product vs others on the market. Habits are hard to drop.

 

[Bmd2k1]

Hi All,

As I prepare for my first real year of attempting to make wine from my own Merlot grapes, I just opened a bottle of Merlot from my favorite commercial winery and thought “what is the ph, the acidity and the brix". Has anyone taken these measurements from a store bought wine? Couldn’t hurt to learn how to use the lab equipment could it?

Dave

I've only tossed a sample in to check SG......to try and mimic FG for a vino.

Cheers!

 

[TurkeyHollow]

I, too, have often wondered about commercial wines' specifications and even thought of creating a database of wines I've tasted with TA, pH, ABV, residual sugar and final gravity (along with tasting notes). I used to like to rate wines on my personal preference, but I've found I have wine "moods" where some nights I like "rip your face off" tannins and other nights I prefer smooth well-rounded tannins. Even though I don't like "vinting by numbers", I like to have a target to get me in the general area before dialing it in. If anyone knows of such a database, I would love to analyze it (disregarding any tasting notes as I really don't care what the "experts" think of a wine as I like to make what I like to drink).