cold stabilization article
Racer, here is one of the articles I came across. I read something else along these line, but can't seen to find it right off tonight. I was hoping some of the zymologists (wine makers) here could give some practical experience.
www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=26469
Today, cold stabilization is the most widely used process to reduce the amount of tartrates in wine. Not only is it believed to help make wines more stable once bottled, but rounder and finer to the taste. Clark Smith co-founder of winemaking consulting firm Vinovation, Inc, disagrees. He believes the cold stabilization process actually tears the wine apart, leaving it a lesser wine than before being chilled to near freezing. "Cold stabilization is inconvenient, unreliable and expensive, robbing the wine of colloidal structure," he said. Smith believes colloids are imperative to a wine's structure, and that a new system of stabilizing wine, called electrodyalisis, removes unwanted tartrates without disrupting the colloidal structure.
Smith claims that the substantial amount of attention to detail in the winemaking process is all for naught because the wine is irreversibly damaged by cold stabilization. In some cases it's heated back up after being frozen, further affecting the wine. "After cold stabilization, the wine falls apart, and many winemakers feel that those problems are a result of bottling, but in fact the problems began the day before, when they started chilling the wine."