Your ML fermentation plan?

Just a curiosity from a non winemaker…
(Forgive the tortured language)

I was thinking about different styles of chardonnay, and I started wondering about the thinking and the mechanics of the process. How do you use malolactic conversion to achieve your specific winemaking goals? And more to the point, what is your thinking along the process?

Natural v innoculant,
timing,
how do you manage it once it’s started?
Are you looking to “put the brakes on” at a certain point or does the process just run its course based on the conditions you created beforehand?

Thanks.

For my whites (Savib/Semillon) I prefer ml so I can go to bottle unfiltered, double dry (ml/rs). I don’t inoculate for it and it seems to go thru on its own in 4-8 months with no adjustments of nutrients or temperature. If there is enough natural acidity in the wine then I don’t seem to get much of the diacetyl character on the nose or in the mouth. I also like ml to take some time so I can bottle with much less total so2. On the Semillion I usually use one new barrel (20-30% new) and the barrel seems to show more on it than I think it would if ml did not go thru which is why I don’t use any more new wood than one new on it.

I did have a vin gris custom crushed off site in 2011 and I stopped ml in the winery on that one with cold temps, racking, and so2. It was then filtered prior to bottling. I wanted some of that very crisp malic acid (think granny smith apple) character in that wine as the pH was a bit higher than I get on our whites.

Thanks Joe, that is exactly the ‘inside baseball’ that I was looking for.

Any others want to share?

Natural v innoculant,

In every wine Ive made, ML eventually started on its own (with my first homemade wine that happened after it was in bottle…).

One exception is that I inoculated one batch of wine because I was impatient to see if it had smoke taint.

timing

For me it usually starts in the fall before it gets too cold. I store my wine in a passive cellar so it gets cold in the winter and that slows down malo. Once it starts warming up again malo picks back up. I like it to last as long as possible because that allows me to delay the first so2.

how do you manage it once it’s started?

Just wait for it to finish.

Are you looking to “put the brakes on” at a certain point or does the process just run its course based on the conditions you created beforehand?

A wine is unstable if it doesn’t go through malo and you don’t sterile filter so finishing its course is pretty important to me.