The Usual Processes

Tonight, more degassing and stabilising. The Muscat Grape Wine was very slowly clearing while I was busy with other things. Tonight I had some time so gave it a glance and decided to rack and degas it. Plenty of gas came out, as you can see from the piccie below. I split the 2 gallons and degassed half a gallon at a time. Just quicker and easier that way.

While I was siphoning I stole a taste, wow, it tastes like the grapes that it was made from and is pretty dry! However it's also very sharp. Perhaps not surprising given that it's very young still and all the grapes were not properly ripe. If you remember the wine was not made with pure juice, rather with diluted juice and just as well! - It's easier to make a light wine than a big wine, and if something is likely to be out of balance then this is a good way to make corrections manageable, but also keep the character of your ingredients. Anyway, after degassing it should be a little less acidic, tho maybe not enough to be noticeable. I am very hopeful for this wine tho, it's still very early days, the taste of the grapes is wonderful, and the only fault is that it's not quite balanced because clarity will come.

The plan then is to stabilise it (additions of metabisulphate and sorbate) then leave it to clear, rack again and then leave it for some time to mellow. If it remains sharp I'll try shoving it outside. Hopefully the cold will cause some tartaric acid to drop out of solution and crystallise, then I'll rack it off the crystals and hey presto acid content is reduced and so is sharpness. If that doesn't work then a little sweetening will bring it all into balance.