Several Batches with a similar off taste

[David Lewis]

Ok, so I need some help here identifying an off taste from several of my wines. I hope that I can fix the batches that have not been bottled but at the very least learn what can be done to not get this odd taste in future batches. Here is what I have made and what I am running up against.

Issue: 3 out of 5 batches of wine over the past two years have an off taste. I know taste is hard to describe, so Ill do my best. The wines have good initial and mid taste but have an atrocious finish. In some ways it reminds me of a wine that was aged in a bourbon barrel. The flavor is deep and dark but not very good. After that I am struggling to provide a better description.

Batches:
2018 - Cab and Cab Franc. Grapes were from Columbia valley on new vines. D80 was used for the Cab Franc and the cab was fermented in two separate batches. One with D80 and one with D254. Wines were oaked in Mediam French Cubes. Tannin Riche extra was used prior to bottling. All wines went through MLF.

2019
- All wines went through MLF
- Cab was from Walla Walla. The grapes were fermented in two separate batches. One with D80 and one with D254. American Oak cubes. This wine is a little on the light side but does not have any aftertaste issues. It general it is a decent wine.
- Syrah - Columbia Valley - The grapes came in with a very high brix but an OK PH. It was watered back with water and tartaric acid to bring the brix down to 25. D80 yeast. American Oak cubes. - This wine's acid is off ( I likely did something stupid on my tartaric acid additions) and it has the bad aftertaste mentioned above.
- Petite Verdot - Columbia Valley, same vineyard that produced the grapes used in the 2018 batches - D254 Yeast. Aged with American oak staves. This wine is slightly more acidic that I would prefer but is darn good.

Out best guesses:
- Over oaked - Possible but I feel like over oaking would not give this taste.
- Pressed to hard and released bad tasting tannins from the seeds. Again, possible. But we knew of our faults from the first batch and were cognizant of not over pressing (at least I thought we were) .
- Too many stems - Possible as these were destemmed at the vineyard but there wasnt an over abundance of stems.
- Water Supply - Any water from batch 1 was tap water (cleaning, yeast starter, etc). For batch 2 we used distilled or spring water (Cant find my notes on that)
- Clueless wine makers - very possible indeed

Ideas, Suggestions, Comments, More info needed?

Thanks for the help!!!!!

 

[NorCal]

Did you take pH readings with a calibrated meter? If so what were they? I forbid myself from making any acid adjustments post ferment, just never seems to go right. I go aggressive pre-ferment and then put the acid away.

I’ve never been a fan of cubes, which seemed to be a common denominator Of your off flavor. I’ve got sharp, almost bitter taste on the backend on a small batch that I made with cubes, never used them again. I’m a fan of spirals, medium toast, when not using a barrel.

I also believe if you get good grapes, the wine will need next to nothing to make a good wine. The only time I add anything to a wine it is to fix a specific problem (like tartaric preferment when the pH is 4.0). I don’t add any tannins, enzymes....just nutrients and yeast. Less is more.

Also don’t be shy about bringing a sample to a local winemaker and ask them to taste your wine and give you honest feedback.

 

[JohnT]

If I were to guess, the "aged bourbon barrel" taste sounds like oxidation. This can be controlled by first attempting to limit the exposure of your wine to air and (most importantly) maintain the correct PH and SO2 balance.

 

[salcoco]

I lean towards to much tannin. do a bench trial with some clear gelatin and see if there is any benefit. gelatin is available in the grocery store will do. If I recall correctly one packet will do 5 gallons but you can educe ti for a bottle sample

 

[stickman]

I didn't see any mention of nutrients being used, so a sulfur off taste could also be a possibility.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* you are saying that the off flavor is spread over several grapes and years, I would concentrate on the process, for the source of flavor
* in judging at state fair oxidation is present in over half of the samples, the issue has two directions, slow oxidation has a sherry like flavor (aka micro oxidation), oxidation with an excess of oxygen produces acetaldehyde (oxidized ethyl alcohol), I describe this as a burn in the back of the throat as it goes down. Again at fair the issue is varying degrees of acetaldehyde oxidation, NOT the slow sherry like reaction.
Possible answer first is to increase the meta on any transfer of your wine, next look at hardware issues as do you splash when you rack, do you rack in air or vacuum, are you in glass or stainless with gaskets or HDPE plastic, are your stoppers snug, . . . etc,
* flavors are hard to name! as @NorCal suggested find someone with experience. My first stop would be the guys that work at the vinters supply store, there should be some experience behind their working at the store. Vinters clubs share samples and critique. Your state may have a contest or there are big ones as KC Cellar dwellers and winemaker, no place samples (bad) are supposed to have suggestions on what was in the process that created the flavor. If it isn’t too bad about 3/4 of judges just give the number score. Work sometimes would do mall intercepts to have “normal” folks taste impressions you can do this on your block, what work likes is a comparison and I would do a commercial vs your test wine, OH! the women in the lab tend to be better discriminating tasters. AND any good chef on the block should be able to isolate flavors (who do you know that puts on dinner parties)
* pressing? look for astringent, alum is readily available as aflavor example, it will dehydrate your mouth, you can also put a few grains in a glass and try it to familiarize yourself tith the feel. A more normal source would be find some organic grapes and chew on the stems. While on the subject, dill is my favorite standard for bitter careful though rinse with crackers after to get it out of your mouth. While on rinsing, tannin binds with protein rinsing with a sandwich meat clears tannins from your mouth faster.
* over oaked? training a panel will have a sample of commercial wine with a cube or several cubes to extract the flavor
* three out of five lots? is there a pattern as the off flavor comes when the winery is hot like 80F
* familiarize yourself with the taste of meta by putting a grain in a glass, if you don’t ID it add more, again gals tend to be more sensitive
* . . . yes more info as what is it like from the grocery store and what is your process like. . . . the biggest risk factor is something you are doing over the several lots of juice
* will sugar mask the flavor? will acid mask the flavor
* rule out aroma, pinch your nose shut while tasting a sample, ,,,, did it go away
* we all struggle with flavor

Ok, so I need some help here identifying an off taste from several of my wines. I hope that I can fix the batches that have not been bottled but at the very least learn what can be done to not get this odd taste in future batches. Here is what I have made and what I am running up against.

Issue: 3 out of 5 batches of wine over the past two years have an off taste. I know taste is hard to describe, so Ill do my best. The wines have good initial and mid taste but have an atrocious finish. In some ways it reminds me of a wine that was aged in a bourbon barrel. The flavor is deep and dark but not very good. After that I am struggling to provide a better description.

Batches:
2018 - Cab and Cab Franc. Grapes were from Columbia valley on new vines. D80 was used for the Cab Franc and the cab was fermented in two separate batches. One with D80 and one with D254. Wines were oaked in Mediam French Cubes. Tannin Riche extra was used prior to bottling. All wines went through MLF.

2019
- All wines went through MLF
- Cab was from Walla Walla. The grapes were fermented in two separate batches. One with D80 and one with D254. American Oak cubes. This wine is a little on the light side but does not have any aftertaste issues. It general it is a decent wine.
- Syrah - Columbia Valley - The grapes came in with a very high brix but an OK PH. It was watered back with water and tartaric acid to bring the brix down to 25. D80 yeast. American Oak cubes. - This wine's acid is off ( I likely did something stupid on my tartaric acid additions) and it has the bad aftertaste mentioned above.
- Petite Verdot - Columbia Valley, same vineyard that produced the grapes used in the 2018 batches - D254 Yeast. Aged with American oak staves. This wine is slightly more acidic that I would prefer but is darn good.

Out best guesses:
- Over oaked - Possible but I feel like over oaking would not give this taste.
- Pressed to hard and released bad tasting tannins from the seeds. Again, possible. But we knew of our faults from the first batch and were cognizant of not over pressing (at least I thought we were) .
- Too many stems - Possible as these were destemmed at the vineyard but there wasnt an over abundance of stems.
- Water Supply - Any water from batch 1 was tap water (cleaning, yeast starter, etc). For batch 2 we used distilled or spring water (Cant find my notes on that)
- Clueless wine makers - very possible indeed

Ideas, Suggestions, Comments, More info needed?

Thanks for the help!!!!!

 

[David Lewis]

Thanks for the input guys!!! Here is some more info to the questions.

Here are the start of my notes for my 2018 wines. PH was 3.35 for the Cab and 3.59 for the Cab Franc. Yeast was dumped directly into must and was not re-hydrated. Additional nutrients were not added at 1/3 sugar depletion.


Unfortunately my notes for the 2019 wine never made it to my new laptop when the old one died. This is what I have recovered from other messages that I sent to the friends helping out. I made sure with this batch to be extra careful about water type, re-hydrating yeast correctly, and timing additional nutrient additions. These were all pressed with just a before brix hit zero (7-10 days depending on the wine). MLF was started on these about 5 days into fermenation (if memory serves me right)

Cab - Brehm - Walla Wall - The Rocks
- Brix 22.6
- PH 3.54

Syrah - Brehm - Columbia Gorge
- Brix 26.1
- Ph 3.3

Petite Verdot - Local Home Brew Store - Columbia Valley
- Brix 23.8
- PH 3.1

 

[David Lewis]

Did you take pH readings with a calibrated meter? If so what were they? I forbid myself from making any acid adjustments post ferment, just never seems to go right. I go aggressive pre-ferment and then put the acid away.

I’ve never been a fan of cubes, which seemed to be a common denominator Of your off flavor. I’ve got sharp, almost bitter taste on the backend on a small batch that I made with cubes, never used them again. I’m a fan of spirals, medium toast, when not using a barrel.

I also believe if you get good grapes, the wine will need next to nothing to make a good wine. The only time I add anything to a wine it is to fix a specific problem (like tartaric preferment when the pH is 4.0). I don’t add any tannins, enzymes....just nutrients and yeast. Less is more.

Also don’t be shy about bringing a sample to a local winemaker and ask them to taste your wine and give you honest feedback.

NorCal, Thanks for the input!!

Noted: Do not use cubes.

We picked up oak staves when we did the Petite Verdot and I am a fan so far. It seems like the price for the stave has come down over the last couple years and is not much more (if not less) than cubes.

Picking up good grapes is always a challenge for the home winemaker. Finding places that sell smaller quantities has been a little rough. The Syrah from last year was fresh grapes from Brehm's vineyard in Underwood, WA. But he will tell you that it was a weird year for the Syrah grapes as the sugars suddenly took off and went through the roof very quickly. We are trying a couple new sources this year with the hopes of eventually making enough wine that our group can start buying by the ton. First, we need to make a good product before we commit to that though

We also tried to bring our sample to our local home brew store to get some feedback. They are awesome to work with but unfortunately they are pick up for products only with covid going on.

 

[David Lewis]

If I were to guess, the "aged bourbon barrel" taste sounds like oxidation. This can be controlled by first attempting to limit the exposure of your wine to air and (most importantly) maintain the correct PH and SO2 balance.

Hey John,
I've been pretty careful with exposure to air... But that doesnt mean that I have been perfect. One thing this makes me think of is that I did wait a long time to add additional SO2. I was waiting several months to make sure MLF completed before adding any additions (too cheap to go buy the chromatography tests).

So, this is something I will look to do better in this years batch. Thanks!!!

 

[David Lewis]

I lean towards to much tannin. do a bench trial with some clear gelatin and see if there is any benefit. gelatin is available in the grocery store will do. If I recall correctly one packet will do 5 gallons but you can educe ti for a bottle sample

That is an easy one to try out. Ill do this in the next couple of days and let you know the results.

 

[David Lewis]

* you are saying that the off flavor is spread over several grapes and years, I would concentrate on the process, for the source of flavor
* in judging at state fair oxidation is present in over half of the samples, the issue has two directions, slow oxidation has a sherry like flavor (aka micro oxidation), oxidation with an excess of oxygen produces acetaldehyde (oxidized ethyl alcohol), I describe this as a burn in the back of the throat as it goes down. Again at fair the issue is varying degrees of acetaldehyde oxidation, NOT the slow sherry like reaction.
Possible answer first is to increase the meta on any transfer of your wine, next look at hardware issues as do you splash when you rack, do you rack in air or vacuum, are you in glass or stainless with gaskets or HDPE plastic, are your stoppers snug, . . . etc,
* flavors are hard to name! as @NorCal suggested find someone with experience. My first stop would be the guys that work at the vinters supply store, there should be some experience behind their working at the store. Vinters clubs share samples and critique. Your state may have a contest or there are big ones as KC Cellar dwellers and winemaker, no place samples (bad) are supposed to have suggestions on what was in the process that created the flavor. If it isn’t too bad about 3/4 of judges just give the number score. Work sometimes would do mall intercepts to have “normal” folks taste impressions you can do this on your block, what work likes is a comparison and I would do a commercial vs your test wine, OH! the women in the lab tend to be better discriminating tasters. AND any good chef on the block should be able to isolate flavors (who do you know that puts on dinner parties)
* pressing? look for astringent, alum is readily available as aflavor example, it will dehydrate your mouth, you can also put a few grains in a glass and try it to familiarize yourself tith the feel. A more normal source would be find some organic grapes and chew on the stems. While on the subject, dill is my favorite standard for bitter careful though rinse with crackers after to get it out of your mouth. While on rinsing, tannin binds with protein rinsing with a sandwich meat clears tannins from your mouth faster.
* over oaked? training a panel will have a sample of commercial wine with a cube or several cubes to extract the flavor
* three out of five lots? is there a pattern as the off flavor comes when the winery is hot like 80F
* familiarize yourself with the taste of meta by putting a grain in a glass, if you don’t ID it add more, again gals tend to be more sensitive
* . . . yes more info as what is it like from the grocery store and what is your process like. . . . the biggest risk factor is something you are doing over the several lots of juice
* will sugar mask the flavor? will acid mask the flavor
* rule out aroma, pinch your nose shut while tasting a sample, ,,,, did it go away
* we all struggle with flavor

That may have been one of the best write ups I have seen in regards to identifying this off taste. Thank you!!!

I will be joining the Portland Area winemakers club once they re-open. I've heard that the group there is extremely friendly and knowledgeable. Unfortunately that wont be for a while. But I will try to track down some people locally that have more experience. It gives me a reason to go out to my favorite wineries anyways

I'll take in some of your tasting suggestions over the next couple of days to see if I can narrow down the flavor that I am getting. I'm hoping it is not oxidation as I have been pretty diligent about keeping air away from the wine post ferment... but I'm still a noob... and noobs are good at noob mistakes. I do think I need to get better at my SO2 management though!

 

[stickman]

The 2018 Cab from Columbia Valley is indicated as having only 43ppm YAN, which is very low.

The 2018 Cab Franc is at 40ppm YAN.

The 2019 Syrah is at only 30ppm YAN.

All of the above musts are very low in nutrient content and prone to H2S issues. Brehm has recommendations for nutrient additions listed on the website. They are very conservative shooting for about 150ppm YAN, so for example the 2019 Syrah would need 120ppm addition. To add 120ppm YAN for your roughly 3.2gal batch would require the typical 6g of Fermaid plus an additional 4g of DAP; add the nutrients in increments before 10 or 12 brix.

 

[David Lewis]

The 2018 Cab from Columbia Valley is indicated as having only 43ppm YAN, which is very low.

The 2018 Cab Franc is at 40ppm YAN.

The 2019 Syrah is at only 30ppm YAN.

All of the above musts are very low in nutrient content and prone to H2S issues. Brehm has recommendations for nutrient additions listed on the website. They are very conservative shooting for about 150ppm YAN, so for example the 2019 Syrah would need 120ppm addition. To add 120ppm YAN for your roughly 3.2gal batch would require the typical 6g of Fermaid plus an additional 4g of DAP; add the nutrients in increments before 10 or 12 brix.

So, the 2018 cab and cab franc did not come from Brehm but rather my local brew store. They get it from a vineyard in the Columbia Valley (they wont tell what vineyard). YAN was not measured for these batches.

The YAN reading for the Syrah would be correct. I get fresh grapes and not their juice buckets... but it all comes from the same grapes.

This is good info for this coming year. How do most (smaller) home wine makers get their YAN numbers. It looks like a test kit is $30-$40 but the ingredients are only good for one season.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Portland May be starting zoom meetings, so it is worth investigating, (the board from my local club decided to start) We were outside with a number of wines including one I wanted an opinion on.

* another fairly common defect is volatile acidity (vinegar/ salad dressing flavor) test a white wine with a few drops of vinegar, one drop may improve a glass adding complex bold flavor notes and as you add more it will eventually become identifiable for what it is. Cause is oxygen in the head space allowing acetobacter grow and ferment alcohol into vinegar.

 

[David Lewis]

And @Rice_Guy is the winner of this weeks episode of "Name that Taste."

Last night I went to taste a bottle of the 2018 pairing it with several foods, sherry and other fun things to try and identify that taste better. But I didn't even need to get to the test. I had an open bottle from Sunday (Vacu Vin Wine Saver) and that Sherry taste was much more prevalent.

Many of you mentioned SO2/Oxygenation. And I honestly did not think that was the issue because I've been very diligent to keep contact with the air to a minimum after fermentation. But the amount and timing of my SO2 additions were likely very off.

I'll see if I can save this years Syrah as it is not too far down the road. But at least I have an answer to the issue. Now I know what I need to correct in this year's batches. Time to buy and SO2 test kit

Thank you everyone that took the time to reply and share your knowledge!!!

 

[Rice_Guy]

As a short term fix, I would suggest EVERY time you move your wine add 0.10 gram per gallon of K meta

and that Sherry taste was much more prevalent. . . . But the amount and timing of my SO2 additions were likely very off. . .I'll see if I can save this years Syrah

* reds hold sulphite fairly well, whites and country wine seem to soak it up.
* you can improve the effectiveness of the meta by decreasing your pH, I try to put everything (mainly country wines) between 3.2 and 3.3
* sherry flavor suggests slow micro oxygenation, we ought to ask how often do you rack? ,,,,, I try to get by with three times maximum, ,,,,

now that brings a counter issue which I don’t know the answer to ,,, What is the off flavor they talk about from “sitting on the lees”?

 

[E-man]

@David Lewis - What brew store did you get these grapes? I'm also in Portland and am doing some through FH Steinbart but was curious if other stores were also bring in grapes this year.
Thanks!

So, the 2018 cab and cab franc did not come from Brehm but rather my local brew store. They get it from a vineyard in the Columbia Valley (they wont tell what vineyard). YAN was not measured for these batches.

The YAN reading for the Syrah would be correct. I get fresh grapes and not their juice buckets... but it all comes from the same grapes.

This is good info for this coming year. How do most (smaller) home wine makers get their YAN numbers. It looks like a test kit is $30-$40 but the ingredients are only good for one season.

 

[David Lewis]

@David Lewis - What brew store did you get these grapes? I'm also in Portland and am doing some through FH Steinbart but was curious if other stores

@David Lewis - What brew store did you get these grapes? I'm also in Portland and am doing some through FH Steinbart but was curious if other stores were also bring in grapes this year.
Thanks!

Hey E-man. My purchases through the brew store were from Baders. Last year i also got fresh grapes from Brehm and this year I am getting grapes from Jim the grape guy. He delivers to home wine makers and wine clubs in the area. Quality seems to be very good as well. We are picking up Cab, Petite Verdot and some left over cab franc this weekend.