Toss a batch of wine ???

[Luc]

I just came back from a holiday in France, and my wines needed attending.

Several wines needed my attention. Elderflower (60 liter), dandelion-strawberry (30 liter), apple-strawberry (5 liter), Pineapple (10 liter). But there was another batch........

About half a year ago I made a batch of pumpkin wine. It was aging in a large 30 liter carboy.
I wanted to bottle it. I though I might take a sip with my winethief first.

The wine was good in balance, had about 11% alcohol (tested), not to acidic, a good mouthfeel. Generally a good wine you would say.

But the taste was no good.
I do not mean it was spoiled or oxidised or anything. We just did not like it. It was not filthy or anything. It was a good wine, but just a no good tasting wine. The flavor was not to our liking.
Just like I do not like most grape wines. It is all a matter of taste.

So I took a bottle of pumpkin wine I made 2 years ago.
When I bottled it, I did not think it was a great wine, but thought that aging would improve it. Well it did not. It tasted like pumpkin wine should, but we did not like the taste. Maybe others will, but we just did not.

Now you might think blending would be an option. But blending will impart the flavor in then wine I would be blending it with so..........

So I tossed 30 liter pumpkin wine.
The other earlier bottled pumpkin wine is going to be used for experiments for my web-log.

Do you think it is a shame to toss a wine that is not to your liking.
Well I don't. Life is too short to drink bad wine.

Luc

 

[Tom]

Luc,
If you were a winery and had the same problem they would toss it. Why is people who drink it EXPECT a certain amount of quality and consistency. If it was not met then they would be very disappointed. Even though in your case its "just for you" it did not meet your standards.
In most cases I would say either age it more or bottle it. Let it sit for 6-12 months and try it again. In your case you are an experienced winemaker and you know what to expect.

 

[Madriver Wines]

Heaven forbid i try to tell Luc anything about wine making!! Tossing a batch is hard to do but if you wont drink it then be gone I say. Too bad though. No one to give it to Luc? Blending is not a good option either since what ever you blend with will taste like pumpkins and remind you how much you dont like that wine.

 

[Wade E]

I would have tried to find someone who liked it. I did that with a batch of Barolo which was a cheaper 10 liter kit and I found it was too weal for me but my friend thought it was the best wine ever, I gave him all 27 bottles I had left after trying 1, cooking a roast with another. All I asked was for the bottles back when hewas done with them. I have a batch of that Ancient Orange Mead that ill probably dump soon if it doesnt come around. I used wine yeast and the cloves and dont like it at all. It could be the yeast i used but thinks its just to may cloves.

 

[Nubz]

i dont have the experience the rest of you who replied do but
what tom said was right
no winery would risk their reputation by keeping something they thought wasnt up to the standard they set so why should you

 

[Luc]

In most cases I would say either age it more or bottle it. Let it sit for 6-12 months and try it again. In your case you are an experienced winemaker and you know what to expect.

You are right Tom. However I am mostly carefull and willing to give wine a chance. I have seen too many wines that get better to excellent after aging. Dandelion wine for example. And aging is easy to do if you make the many wines like I do and have a cellar full of hundreds of bottles to choose from.
In this case that was exactly the reason why I opened a 2 year old pumpkin wine and we decided the flavor was just not to our liking.

I did however bottle about 50 bottles today.
A batch of 5 liter rhubarb, 5 liter apple-strawberry, 5 liter anise wine which gave a really strange taste experience and has great potential, and 35 liter dandelion-strawberry.

And before anybody starts asking: No I am not willing yet to share the recipes for the rhubarb and the anisewine until they have aged properly. Although I doubt that the rhubarb will last this summer, it is that refreshing......

And wade is of course right in the fact that I should have found someone who liked the pumpkin and give it to them. There must be someone out there that likes pumpkin wine, because there are even people who like french grape wines

The point I was looking for to start a discussion about is wether any of you makes the same decision sometimes, or do you keep your wines at all cost.
A few years ago I made the same decision about Kiwi wine. I made it two times in a row and it came out bad. So one batch I tossed and the other one I used for experiments for my web-log.

Luc

 

[Wade E]

I have only ever dumped 2 wines(actually they were musts that never made it to wine). It was when i switched from campden tablets to powder and made 2 batches of Vintners Hravest Wine bases and read the directions wrong on the can for adding sulfite and added enough sulfite for all the batches I have ever made probably!

 

[Nubz]

not anything major but i threw out that first gallon of apple wine i made a while back when i first came around here
it just kept tasting like a mouthful of sugar and water

i think it would depend on how curious i was how it would end up after time or how nasty i thought it would be

 

[arcticsid]

Last winter I made a batch of orange wine using fresh oranges, I didnt remove the thin white skin around the "meat" itself this resulted in a very bitter product that ohterwise would have been an outrageous wine. Instead of dumping it I gave it to the neighbor who had no drink. He thought it was wonderful and now thinks I am some sort of wine making expert. Guess it proves it is all in the taste. There was nothing wrong with it but I sure wasn't gonna drink it.
Troy

 

[Malkore]

I"m about to dump 5 gallons of Kolsch beer that turned out 'wrong'. It initially was good, but then it seemed to go stale in a week. I think it got oxidized once kegged and transported to a party 3 hours each direction.

A tossed batch isn't a failure, but a chance to learn

 

[myakkagldwngr]

Thanks for the honesty in this thread. My first batch of elderberry is now aging in bottles and I hope it improves. The second batch is still in a carboy and is much better than the first. If the first, only a case of 750 ml doesn't get better in six months or so, I'll probably do away with it.
Now I'll probably see about running it through a cooker, but I'm not certain of that yet.
I tried both batches on the same day, with only weeks apart in their age, and the first was so earthy that it's not enjoyable.

 

[BettyJ]

Tossing wine

Yes - Last summer I tossed out almost 5 gallons of mango wine when I could not adjust the acid any more - it was metallic with off smells and pretty nasty (very strong). I bottled a few (5 or so) for cooking and when I tasted it a few weeks ago it was almost good. I thought I was dealing with bad water, but it was probably the heat just speeded the fermentation up too fast. Oh well live and learn

 

[Wade E]

If any of you have the ability to keg then its a good thing to do with a wine that is only so-so. Thats what happens with a lot of not so good wines and the carbonation does something and turns a lame wine into a pretty darn good sparkling wine.

 

[myakkagldwngr]

Do you mean the kegging systems like they do with beer and CO2?