David_Rozgonyi
Junior
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2010
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Hey all! I hope to write a better intro to myself soon, but in the meantime, I had an odd question for any of you gurus...
Long story short: I'm a dual US citizen living in Hungary. My neighbor offered to show me into winemaking. He is an old salt, making wine for 4 decades. But being an old Hungarian, he uses no equipment (testing, etc) and sanitation is well antiquated at best, as I've been learning from books on the subject. With his help, I made 100 liters of Zweigelt. Wild yeast only, no wine yeast. Racked several times, oak barrel aged. The product actually won a gold medal in the local competition for young wines a few weeks ago, so it tasted pretty great.
PROBLEM: I have the wine now in 25 liter carboys. When I racked last week, I noticed an odd white "stuff" in the wine when I held the lees against a light. NOT chunky surface bloom (wine flowers?), rather it looks extremely diaphanous, like roiling fog just under the surface (not a scum on the surface). Or like when two different viscosities are not mixed... When I pour a little into a dish, it is almost as if the pigment is gone in places! When I stir it vigorously, the haze vanishes into the rest of the wine. Otherwise, the wine smells and tastes very good. As a test, and since the wine was undersulfured in general, I dumped a teaspoon of sulfur into it (into about 3 liters of wine). No change a few days later. But again, if I slosh it around, the "fog" disappears for a few hours. Then it's back.
There are no filaments, no clotting... I've been doing some homework, and was wondering if it could be some sort of pectin or lactic haze? Is this how it presents? And if so, what can I do?? I brought all the wine up to about 80 ppm sulfur today.
Any help would be most appreciated!
All best,
David
Long story short: I'm a dual US citizen living in Hungary. My neighbor offered to show me into winemaking. He is an old salt, making wine for 4 decades. But being an old Hungarian, he uses no equipment (testing, etc) and sanitation is well antiquated at best, as I've been learning from books on the subject. With his help, I made 100 liters of Zweigelt. Wild yeast only, no wine yeast. Racked several times, oak barrel aged. The product actually won a gold medal in the local competition for young wines a few weeks ago, so it tasted pretty great.
PROBLEM: I have the wine now in 25 liter carboys. When I racked last week, I noticed an odd white "stuff" in the wine when I held the lees against a light. NOT chunky surface bloom (wine flowers?), rather it looks extremely diaphanous, like roiling fog just under the surface (not a scum on the surface). Or like when two different viscosities are not mixed... When I pour a little into a dish, it is almost as if the pigment is gone in places! When I stir it vigorously, the haze vanishes into the rest of the wine. Otherwise, the wine smells and tastes very good. As a test, and since the wine was undersulfured in general, I dumped a teaspoon of sulfur into it (into about 3 liters of wine). No change a few days later. But again, if I slosh it around, the "fog" disappears for a few hours. Then it's back.
There are no filaments, no clotting... I've been doing some homework, and was wondering if it could be some sort of pectin or lactic haze? Is this how it presents? And if so, what can I do?? I brought all the wine up to about 80 ppm sulfur today.
Any help would be most appreciated!
All best,
David