Question about ageing

[PAFruitWines]

im kinda new and have some questions about the ageing process. this is my understanding so far. (please correct me if im wrong). during bulk ageing in a carboy with an airlock, there is some oxygen entering and some oxidation that causes the wine to age. then with the wine transferred to a bottle with a cork there is still some oxygen transfer and further ageing. if I bulk age in in a carboy, then transfer to gallon jugs with screw on caps, how does this affect the aging/maturing process?

thanks, Mike

 

[roger80465]

These are good questions. I decided to google it and found this article. It seems to cover most of your questions. An article in Wikipedia said that it has been estimated that only about 10% of wines will be significantly better at 5 years than at 1 year. Thought that was interesting. As always, it depends on your tastes and what qualities you fancy in a wine. Anyway, here is the link I referred to. Certainly not a world renowned wine authority but informative nonetheless.

http://www.chow.com/food-news/53932/what-happens-to-wine-as-it-ages/

 

[GreginND]

Unless you have specialized equipment for screw caps, you are not getting the same seal as a commercial screw cap. I would expect a hand tightened screw cap to leak air at about a similar rate as a cork. Which may be just fine.


Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

 

[PAFruitWines]

I get plastic screw on caps at the LHBS. they have a soft inner seal that I believe is air tight.

 

[peaches9324]

I think the poly seal caps are what your talking about? They seem they would do the trick but have never used them let us know if you have any issues with them

 

[Turock]

Here's some more info on the bulk aging process that was taught in the UC Davis online winemaking course. Components in wine that form hazes, precipitates, and sediments denature over time and form colloides and then agglutinated complexes. If enough time is allowed for this to happen, the particulate matter that forms can be removed thru racking. This process removes unstable components from the wine, thus stabilizing it.So aging can be thought of as achieving wine stability.

Aging also eliminates unwanted volatile esters which are not stable components. Many of these are microbial in origin and not considered part of the varietal characteristic.

Aging stabilizes tannins, pigments, and color. Bitter and astringent compounds may also form up and drop out of the wine.

So as you can see, bulk aging improves your wine in more ways than just the firming of flavor. All wines, except early drinking wines, should go thru a good period of time in bulk aging for these processes to happen.

 

[seth8530]

In addition to what Turock mentioned,

For the most part aging with an airlock is a pretty much O2 free environment so long as you are topped off. Especially when you compare it to a barrel. So, for the most part I would not expect much aging to be done on the oxidative front for both carboy and bottle aged front. However, this does not mean that bulkaging is not a crucially important part of the winemaking processes.

I would be intersed in seeing some more science related articles behind what goes on during aging, if anyone has them available.

 

[PAFruitWines]

thanks for the replies. this answers my question. I have a batch of blueberry and also a raspberry melomel in the secondarys now. my plan is to bulk age in a carboy for 6 mo, then transfer to gallon jugs for further aging. the screw on caps make for easy storage and I can quickly bottle 5 bottles at a time.

peaches I have been using these screw caps on both gallons and bottles of dragon blood. very convenient and no problems so far.

 

[Turock]

I would be somewhat dubious about capping a wine after only 6 months of bulk aging. You'd be surprised how much CO2 can still remain on a wine that is that young. I've even seen some CO2 on a wine that was 9 months old. There is no problem with long term storage with an airlock. Just monitor it so it doesn't go dry, and some meta water, in the airlock, will hold off biological activity longer than plain water.

There is no oxygen exposure in a properly topped up carboy. I agree with what Seth said. Barrel aging is a whole 'nother thing.