White Wines

[Rocky]

I want to throw out a question to all of you to see if you can help me. I am very pleased with my red wines. They generally have good balance, texture and nose. My white wines do not.

What I get in the nose of my whites is a slight yeasty aroma. Also, the wines seem to lack the tartness of some of their commercial brethren. Color and mouth are great. Should I try a specific yeast? (I normally use EC 1118 with just about everything). Should I add some acid blend to get a little more tartness?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tingo]

Rocky,

I have had much success with my whites because of cold fermenting and cold storage. I find a yeast that works well with whites, has good aromatic characteristics and can handle fermentation at around 50-55f temps. I start fermentation around 75-80f to get it to start and then within a day i put my carboys in my kegerator. I keep them chilled until i bottle. The result is a good crisp fruity profile with a wonderful aroma.

 

[Rocky]

Thank you Tingo. What yeast did you use and what variety were you making? Most of my white is Pinot Grigio with some Sauvignon Bland and Chardonnay-Semillon. As I recall, the Sauvignon Blanc and the Chard-Semillon did not have the yeasty flavor and they were somewhat crisper. I don't remember if I used a different yeast or just trusty old EC1118.

 

[rodo]

Rocky
I have done very well with Cote Des Blanc.

 

[Julie]

I agree with Rodo on the coteslus have your acid around .75%

 

[Pumpkinman]

Tingo, good info, this isn't the first time that I've heard that slow and cold fermentation and cold storage will make a crisper white.
Rocky, I would add tartaric acid before using an acid blend, unless you are making your own acid blend, I've read that a lot of acid blends load up on citric acid.

Rocky, my Pinot Grigio was originally super acidic, this was before I had the proper machine to test it, I waited until after fermentation to test and try to adjust it, it was a major failure, it was acidic to the point of wanting to toss it. I added Bioless to it and let it sit for 3 months, it mellowed the acidity big time, I am very impressed, but it still was just a hair too tart for our taste, I liked everything else about the wine, a real nice fruit forward Pinot Grigio, I decided that I was going to stabilize it and back sweeten just enough to mellow the tartness (if that is even a word) to the point that it became a nice crisp, fruit forward Pinot Grigio, I had nothing to lose, if I screwed up, I wouldn't serve it to anyone but "us"...lol
I left it sit for 3 days after adding sorbate, and raising the SG from 0.992 to 1.000..... I wish I had made 10 gallons of this wine! Everyone loves it, flat out loves it!
I started with 5 gallons, I now have 3.5 gallons left, and I am questioning if I should even bottle it...LOL...it is going from Carboy to 1/2 gallon growler....lmao My Wife, Mother, Daughter and occasionally Son have a glass or three with dinner...lol

What does this have to do with your Pinot Grigio?...probably nothing...lol...just thought that I'd share my story...lol

 

[rob]

We recently toured a winery and the ferment their white at 55 degrees for 5 week, I think that is the secrete, hard for us to do it.

 

[Deezil]

Cold and slow/steady is the way to go.. The closer you can hold it to 55-60F, and the longer you can drag out the fermentation with things like staggering your yeast nutrients will help to retain the aromatics

It could be, partially, where the grapes/juice came from. Hot climates ruin the acidity in white wines when the vines arent handled correctly - thats why California is better at buttery Chardonnay than the crisp, fruitier Chardonnay you'll find in Washington.

EC-1118 is a bull in a china shop, imo.

QA23 (sold by Brew & Wine Supply + others) is recommended for Sauv. Blanc in particular; "excellent thiol converter making it a complementary yeast for developing varietal Sauvignon Blanc passion fruit character"

I used R-HST & W-15 on Riesling last year, blended the yeasts post-fermentation & I'm loving the results. I'll be using both of those yeasts again; purchased from MoreWine

BA-11 is another recommended for Sauv. Blanc & I'll be trying this one in my Riesling adventures as well; "Promotes clean aromatic characteristics and high levels of polysaccharide production, resulting in wines have nice mouthfeel and improved color stability", "In neutral white grape varieties, encourages the fresh aromas of tropical fruit, cream, vanilla and spice"

Many, many options, for Chardonnay

 

[JohnT]

Rock,

Try Lalvin D-47. I have had really good luck with this yeast strain.

What do you mean by "it lacks tartness"? are you saying that it is not dry enough? Perhaps not tannic enough?

 

[Rocky]

John, I may be using a poor description but when I drink a good commercial Pinot Grigio, I get an almost citrus background taste. That is what I meant by tartness. I really think it is acidity that I am lacking. I think I will experiment with a bottle or two.

 

[robie]

I use D47 and try to keep temperature below 62F, which is about as low as I can maintain.

Try decanting the white for as long as possible, before it starts tasting oxidized. The flavor and aroma will really start to shine.

I agree about using straight tartaric acid, rather than acid blend. Also, Joe (joeswine) recommends zesting a white with grapefruit zest. I do it. It seems to give a chardonnay a nice spark. Just be careful and rack off the zest before it starts to breakdown, about two weeks is good.

I have found that a good white blend is most likely to give you a nice drinking white. For kits, try some of the white blend kits.

 

[Turock]

Rocky---what is the PH on these whites?

Don't tell anyone, but we use acid blend in our Niagara because it gives it that nice tartness. There are a couple different kinds of acid blend. Some of it has citric as the first acid. We don't use that. We look around to find acid blend with citric as the second or third acid content.

That little bit of citric really does fabulous things on a Niagara, and is probably why people who like that wine, like ours better than any other Niagara.

You could take some citric acid and add a few grains to a glass of your white to see if it helps what you think is lacking in the wine. That would give you a few clues.

Also, we set our PH on white grape wine to 3.2 That PH helps with crispness,too.

 

[joeswine]

The great whites

SOMETIMES, their not all what they could be, most have a small amount of noise or aroma, some have good mouth feel but not all, it all depends on the amount of solids that are provided to you by the source, cold fermentation helps, but not practical in the everyday world ,agree? SO where does that leave us home wine makers?

CHECK with different yeast manufactures, but for most whites it is what it is, so now what ,THINK OUT SIDE THE BOX, aroma is important but most cases there is very little even in commercial brands that's why they blend for wood to steel, can we do that? not really/- so what can be done, .ii

FIRST no the taste characteristic's of the white your making, check the yeast charts for the best mate that complements the wines structure, do your home work a little goes a long way...as stated before, add white currents to the secondary for body and added structure if you do this correctly it will not over power the taste to the original wine (if it had any to begin with)and if the rest kind of works out= then after the base is completed add some ZEST to the mix it will brighten up the wine add acidity to the back end ,NO DOWN SIDE.......try a bottle of FRANCE FORD COPPOLA'S CHARDONNAY chilled. You'll see what I mean,this a good target to shoot for. WHITE wines are my favorite actually and they are fun to experiment with......

 

[grapeman]

I find plain ole cotes des blancs to work will with my white wines for most of them. It leaves the fruity flavors alone and does not blow off the aromatics like 1118 will. I use cold climate grapes so they are naturally abundant in acid and the cotes des blancs leaves it alone, unlike 71B-1122.

 

[Rocky]

Thank you all for your replies. I certainly have a lot of great ideas here.

Turock, I am embarrassed to say that I have not measured pH. Is that stupid or what? It is doubly stupid because I have a Vinmetrica SC300 which I am too lazy to learn to use. Sometimes I wonder how I made it this far in life.

Grapeman, Joe and Robie, Thanks, I will try some different yeasts.

I really appreciate everyone's help. Thank you.

 

[Turock]

I think that if you ever get around to using a PH meter, that you'll find your wines are so much better. Especially on the whites.

 

[ffemt128]

I want to throw out a question to all of you to see if you can help me. I am very pleased with my red wines. They generally have good balance, texture and nose. My white wines do not.

What I get in the nose of my whites is a slight yeasty aroma. Also, the wines seem to lack the tartness of some of their commercial brethren. Color and mouth are great. Should I try a specific yeast? (I normally use EC 1118 with just about everything). Should I add some acid blend to get a little more tartness?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Rocky,

I had the same issue with my whites and posed a similar question myself before getting the Chilean whites this year. I checked ph and ta prior to fermentation. TA was very low on both my Sauv Blanc and my Muscat. I adjusted up with tartaric only (recommended by several members here) to around .70%. I fermented with D-47. Initial tastes so far at racking is giving me the desired results I was hoping to achieve which is the same as you posted. I was lacking the crispy, fruity finish of the comercial wines.

I'll have to take a sample from the "extra" bottle soon and see how they are progressing.

Here's the link to my original post on the topic. I think we are both after the same thing....

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f60/white-wines-crisp-taste-38033/

 

[jswordy]

FWIW...

50-60 degrees is preferred fermentation temp; the whites in many wineries are primary fermented in sealed containers with a tube and water airlock in order to retain the higher aromatics that they claim are lost in open fermenters. For home use, a 3-piece airlock works. Of course, the grapes have to have the higher aromatics present in the first place in order for this to be a good approach. Can't hurt, though.

Adding tannin post-fermentation may also help. There's a special white wine tannin; I forget what it's called. Anyway, it can slightly darken the wine so some people don't use it.

 

[olusteebus]

I can't find it now but seems I read Lalvin has a new yeast out that is very good for white wine and it has just been introduced. I could be wrong.