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Monty Knapp

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I made a batch of Eclipse Sauvignon Blanc back in 2017. Fermentation completed 5/20/17. Bottled 8/26/17. At the time it tasted fantastic.
Final stats: SG .99, pH 3.4, Alcohol 14%, TA 0.65%, SO2 36 ppm.
I drank some and gave some away, then decided to save the remaining 10 or 12 bottles for some real aging. So this spring I pulled out a bottle and it tasted bad. Cork smelled like cork, not wine. Cork looked kind of gray or white.
A few weeks later tried another bottle and it was good, or at least OK. (A newer batch of Eclipse Sauvignon Blanc just completed in January tasted better.) Cork looked fine.
Today I opened another bottle and it tastes bad. Has a strong, very bitter aftertaste like grapefruit. Poured it out. Opened 3 more bottles of this batch and they have same terrible bitter aftertaste. Cork wet area looks gray. My nose isn't working today, but my wife says the corks smell like wine to her.
Probably unrelated, but these bottles all have clear "crystals" in the bottles. (I plan to cold stabilize white wines in the fall from now on.)
Any ideas?
Did my corks go bad?
Fungus or something?20190728_190249.jpg 20190728_190307.jpg 20190728_190356.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sounds like two things, first one is that your wine sounds “corked”, do some reading up on TCA and understand the potential sources. Could be bad corks, or possibly from exposure to bleach as a cleaner, hard to say.

Crystals are just wine diamonds, no big deal, there are ways to prevent them if you’re so inclined.
 

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