Dry as in you feel confident not sterile filtering? One winemaker I trust says 0.5 G/L. Id be curious hearing additional viewpoints.
I’ve heard anything under 1G/L is considered dry in CA and most dry wine here is between .5 and .7
Yeah that’s the conventional wisdom but my friend was pretty adamant that anything over .5 was in a danger zone and needing sterile filtration. I’d be curious to get some more feedback.
That sounds about right to me. Pinot will usually get down around 3g/L, but I’ve had other things like syrah stop around 6g/L, and it’s made me uneasy. I would expect that zins would be higher, on average.
My lab just came back at 1.6 for an Amador zin.
To steal from the late, great Sam Kinison that is like mummy pussy.
That was actually in the lab report
There you go.
I’ve heard that same 0.5 number from more than one source. I made a Vermentino last year that stuck at 1.1g/L and sterile filtered that one to be safe…first time one of my own Gang of Six wines didn’t go dry but I’ve worked with other wines that had to be filtered for that reason.
I’ll check in with the folks at the winery, but I know my pre-bottling labs for my 2013 came in at 0.1.
Something like that.
Sorry – missed a decimal point here. I always get results in mg/100mL and that seems to involve one more conversion than I can handle.
Barry, I bet you aren’t harvesting the raisined fruit that lots of zin producers have to coax to dryness – or not.
1.6 what exactly? As a percent or g/L and is that glucose/fructose or all reducing sugars? It would make a big difference. To me, sterile filtering everything not .5 g/L or lower would be a bit conservative. Another factor is your alcohol level. If your Amador Zin is 16+% I would say your risk of re-fermentation is low. That bring up another question. Is re-fermentation the concern or is it sugar as bacterial/Brett food?
Yes, that seems to be the consensus from my limited querying. My 2013 glucose/fructose on pre-bottling day came in from the lab as “<0.1 G/L.”
I tend to go for safe, reliable, tested. We don’t fine but we do filter.
Just checked my 2 Vinquiry results from 2014. Glu+fru came in at “none detected”. Guess that’s as dry as it comes!
Awesome. When will you bottle that?
I bottled a few weeks ago. It was aged in smaller 30 gallon barrels, which has more surface to volume.
Are you just worried about secondary fermentation? What about using Velcorin at bottling to kill off any leftover yeast?
I try and pick before there is any widespread raisining. And if not I try and sort those bunches out.
Under .2% which is under 2G/liter.
I test lots of wines sold as dry and the ones that seem sweetish are often in the .4-.6% range for reds, particularly Zin. I assume they are filtered.
Be sure that you are not mixing your units in conversation on % sugar and G/L.