Sunday, February 11, 2007

Bottling day


The 2005 zinfandel and chardonnay went to bottle today. We had several sets of hands pitching in so we made quick work of about 8 cases of zin and 5 of chardonnay. The zin went to bottle unfiltered while the chard was minimally filtered and NOT cold-stabilized, so if you put it in the fridgie for several days it might develop a small sediment of "wine diamonds" (hey, I didn't make that up - google it). Don't get too excited - these crystals can form over time, especially in cool storage conditions, as the natrually occuring tartaric acid in the wine precipatetes out of solution as potassium bitartrate (available on your spice rack as cream of tartar). Most American white wines are processed by chilling the wine in large vats before bottling to force this precipation to occur - better for retail sales to consumers who might think the crystals are bits of broken glass. We did not do this step on our white wines. In Europe, especially Germany where grapes are more acidic, minimally-processed white wines will often develop these crystals over time. Check it out next time you open an old Trockenbeerenauslese ;-).

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