My first rose: To MLF or not to MLF

My first rose is now done with primary. I was going to let it go to MLF but part of me likes the austere quality it has now. I do also like rounder and softer roses too and I don’t really want to give it a heavy dose of so2 and I don’t own or really would like to use a sterile filter.

For those of you who do a rose, do you stop MLF?

It seems most domestic roses I try are nearly undrinkable with so2. That’s something I certainly don’t want.

FWIW, this was picked to be made as a rose and isn’t just a bleed from a red wine fermentation.

No ml for me.

What grape?

Numbers?

No ml for me.

Do you do anything other than so2 to stop it?

What grape?

Zin and Primotivo from the save vineyard. They tasted almost identical so I used them together.

Numbers?

Picked at 21. Forget PH off the top of my head. I have it on my other computer.

I think that pH and TA will be critical to your decision. If the acidity is pretty high now (very possible given the 21 brix), I’d let it go through ML. It will simplify things down the line, and it’s really the only option if you don’t want to sterile filter in any case.

Ken,

I respectfully disagree with this part: “it’s really the only option if you don’t want to sterile filter in any case.” as a blanket statement. We have no sterile filter and have never had a rosé go through ML in bottle since 1985. If your pH is low, it is sometimes difficult to get ML to happen, even when you are trying to encourage it.

Barry,

Another choice: BBL or SS? We go SS and aim for bright acid/crisp style. I think the ML - goes with SS and the ML + goes with neutral oak, but all I really know is how we do it, so take my input with a grain of salt.

Like Andrew, I bottle a rose’ without filtration. We do ours in stainless steel and take the SO2 up to 50-60 ppm after fermentation is done. We get it clear, fine it, and bottle as quickly as we can so we don’t have to keep adding SO2. Our volume is low but no problems so far.

Good point, Andrew. I’ve bottled a low pH wine that didn’t fully complete ML and haven’t had a problem with that one. That pH was pretty low, around 3.2 - 3.25. But I’ve also seen wines that were presumed to be at a “safe” pH go off after they were bottled without filtering so it’s a calculated risk. Bumping up the SO2 level as Steve noted would be the way to do it. Again, a lot depends on what the pH of Berry’s wine is - hard to give much useful advice without more info on the wine.

I do not reco making time bombs. Put it through ml or filter it, but clicking your heels and hoping for the best seems a recipe for disaster regardless of whether or not a bomb has never gone off before. You get to make your reputation once and if you referment in bottle, then… oops.

I make full ml, technically dry, unfiltered pink, white and red.

We halt malo. Mostly at the get go, but sometimes we run a couple ferms in neutral barrel and let that go a little, then add it back. It ends up being less than 10% of the blend. To avoid adding a bundle of SO2, we drop temps down around fifty and add about 60 parts. Sterile filter before bottling. I’ll double up with Todd, Andrew, don’t make bombs. That’ll bite you in the ass sooner or later. I also advocate against saignee rose and while Todd’s bottling might be one of the exceptions, by and large think that if you are going to make rose of any seriousness, you’re not going to want to run it through full malo.

Our pink is pressed off, 24 months in bbl and a 2010, which is gone now. Lovely stuff, but a totally different beast than most pinks. My idea was to attack Tempier…

If I had my choice for Rose, I’d also stop ML and sterile filter. But if you don’t want to sterile filter, as mentioned in the original post, I’d rather play it safe and let the wine go through ML. As Todd and Hank mention, I would not want to risk it going off in the bottle…it might not happen but you just never know.

I don’t recommend anything. I was just saying that if you used so2 properly, and have low ph, ml is hard to encourage, much less taking off on it’s own. I think people are wise to use caution we telling others what to do. At the same time, we have bottled 100’s of whites and roses with no sterile filter and no ml for almost 30 years. I am not saying it is risk free. Just that in our experience, the risk is overstated. Proceed at your own risk level of comfort.

Good points Andrew and I completely agree. You have to look at your own level of risk acceptance and proceed accordingly. I don’t think I recommended my approach, just stated what it is. To me, a high pH rose’ is not very good. So low pH and bumping SO2 levels works for me both from a taste and stability point of view. My rose’ is low volume, direct to customer. If you are selling unfiltered, no MLF rose’ into Safeway stores that’s a whole different beast.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Yes, particularly to the Safeway part. 99% of my customers know where I live. If there is an issue, they know how to let me know. Plus, we have had long track record of our local supporters enjoying our wines, so they won’t be turned away by one bottle. Lastly, Rosé is not our main business.

I’m surprised lysozyme hasn’t come up. I’ve used it to stop ML partway thru on viognier, and it seems pretty effective. It’s pH dependent, so if you’re very low, it might not be the answer.

My understanding is lysozyme has its intended effect at/above 3.8 pH (it might have some tiny amount of effect at 3.7pH, can’t remember the details…the pH’s were high enough for this to not be of interest to me).

One (slightly) interesting point they (the folks at Scott Labs) made (which I’ve read/confirmed elsewhere) is that although lysozyme doesn’t have any ‘active’ effect on LAB bacteria (this is redundant, sorry) at lower pHs…it does reduce the amount of LAB (and brett, etc) in your wine because of the effect of fining. I.e. fining your wine will reduce the levels of all organisms present in the wine (this is true of all fining agents, but some are more effective at this than others…don’t know which those are tho…sorry). This won’t reduce your organism counts to zero…but it might make it easier for the sulfur, or whatever you’re using, to manage it.

I knew that its effectiveness diminished as pH dropped, but I hadn’t heard that there was a threshold that high. In any case, the viognier was about 3.3 pH, and MLF was halted partway thru. There was a subsequent SO2 add, but (and this was the point of trying lysozyme) not at the nuke’em level that I had used the preceding year to stop MLF.
On the advisability of MLF – it’s counterintuitive notion, but MLF could, theoretically, “freshen up” a wine by scrubbing up aldehydes. Since my half-assed stabs at rose in the past have yielded pretty aldehydic swill, I would probably try sending my next attempt thru MLF to see if I could avoid this fate. Either that, or actually pay some attention to it.

What do you think caused that? To much air contact after primary?

Yes. Mostly neglect. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned there about avoiding making wines you don’t care about.