pH adjustments post ML

Post ML, would you adjust pH if it is at 4.1

If so, what is your poison?

Not just yes, but hell yes. [wow.gif]

Is it white or red?
Tartaric, obviously. I’ve done citric adds to whites (just small ones) not for pH adjustments but more for general flavor profile adds, and they didn’t really bring the pH down much. Don’t be afraid.

It’s grenache. I got some as an experiment. It was picked at 30brix and been a problem ever since.

If you don’t get the pH down, not only will it taste yucky, but it will be a microbial nightmare for the life of the wine. Get that pH down.

Thank you Linda. I was hesitant to add tartaric based on all of the stories you hear about late tartaric adds tasting funny. It’s the lesser of evils right now.

It integrates surprising quickly. Not sure what the naysaying is about.

Hope I’m not too late, but after you calculate the necessary tartaric, add it in stages and test the results before adding any more.

thank you thomas. i did something similar in that i did some bench trials first. but i did make the add all at once. will keep this in mind for the future!

Tim, depending on volume, your bench trials might be enough.

thankfully I only had about 20 gallons :slight_smile:

Linda and Thomas - thank you so much for your time and expertise!

Really, I think the bench trial route is best. When you “feel your way along” with incremental adds to the main lot, you tend to get minimal pH movement from the initial adds as you work against the wine’s buffering capacity. Just about at the point where you lose patience and move to a more significant add, you will have suddenly exhausted the buffering capacity and wind up overshooting. Better to find that point on the bench.

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adding TA later on in the fermentation or just adding too much can have the wine taste “baggy”… ie: like acid.

4.1 pH is crazy wack funky. I’m not sure what you’re going to target - maybe 3.8? It’s going to be a crazy add while in bbl. I think you’re best racking it into tank and doing an addition as opposed to doing it individually in barrel - which is just going to be a huge mess.

nevermind… just read it was 20 gallons. :slight_smile:

I would definitely get the add in asap if your going to do so. The sooner the better. However depending on varietal and style of wine not sure what your target PH will be. There are lots of high end big reds with a 4pH and TA of 4 g/l, so called 4x4 wines.
With a lot that small I assume you don’t plan to filter so microbes could be an issue with out crazy high free So2 numbers. If you added water to bring down that 30* brix that would shift PH up as well as water has a pH of about 7. Stem inclusion will push your pH up as well. If you have any other lots you could also blend to help out the pH. GSM maybe?

Tim,

I’ve seen more good wine that became average wine because the winemaker thought the pH was too high, even though it tasted fine without the acid addition. If there’s sufficient tannin, or if the acid tastes in balance, you don’t have to bring down the pH. It’s not a big lot, you’re not a commercial sized winery (yet!), and you’re one of the cleanest people I’ve ever worked with, so I wouldn’t worry about a microbe infestation. If it were to happen, you could look at the bright side and hope for added “complexity.”

Two weeks ago I saw a colleague of mine stressing out because they had a pH of 3.80 on a Pinot lot that tasted great, but they couldn’t deal with 3.80 on Pinot, so they thought they had to bring it down with an acid addition. I have a couple of Pinots from 2012 that are just a bit north of 4.00, and when people try them they say, “Nice balance.”

Add acid only by taste, not by pH meter and TA. Just my $.08, adjusted for inflation.

that Ed guy seems to know what he is talking about

Ed - with ph >4.00 on the pinots, do you notice any browning? Also, what are your thoughts on drinking windows - I’m guessing your thoughts may be that there’s enough fruit on the '12’s that they will age just fine but curious if you think they should be drunk earlier than other vintages.

John,

I would say the color on the high pH Pinots is definitely not brilliant. I was pouring a couple of them on the east coast this week and people kept commenting on the color, in good ways. And for ageability, the '12s seem to have more structure than I first thought. Maybe 8 to 10 years, could be longer. That happens a lot, a vintage of Pinot will show well soon after bottling, and we think, “Better drink these soon,” then 6 months down the road they find some structure and start to close down. I do think '12 is the earliest drinking year for Pinots since '04, but the '04s are doing great 10 years later.

Hi Ed,
I made a barrel of Pinot from beautiful 2012 Santa Rita Hills fruit that was picked at 3.45 pH. This was my first Pinot
after 20 barrels of bordeaux varietals and Petite, and I’d never made a pH adjustment if it was that low at crush.
After 12 months in a barrel I noticed some browning at the edges and at 16 months (bottling) decided to take
a reading, which was 4.06 pH. I was very surprised pH rose that much, but I chose against a tartaric adjustment because an early Cabernet adjusted post fermentation had the unmistakable taste of an acid addition. I guess the lesson here is to test often (or stick to the easy varietals). This is not commercial wine.

Trust your palate. Don’t be a slave to numbers. Wine is too complex to be broken down into numbers anyway.

Bud, how does it taste?

Hank, great quote!