Barolo Sediment

I know there is ample discussion on the board about the detrimental effect of sediment in Barolo. Most recommend standing a bottle up for anywhere from 1-4 weeks to let the fine particles fall to the bottom, then decanting.

My question is whether filtering the wine through a fine coffee filter can accomplish the same thing? In other words, rather than planning weeks in advance, can I pull out an old Barolo and filter it and avoid the bad effects of the sediment on the flavor of the wine?

The short answer is no. I will usually stand up for > 1 month and decant and still lose 2 oz at the bottom. When I filter those 2 oz through a coffee filter, the sediment disappears but the wine has a notable bitter component from the tannins that remains compared to the rest of the bottle.

I’m in agreement with Ashish.

I’d probably accept it for a younger Barolo/Barbaresco, when less sediment has preciptated out. Not for an older one though.

Thanks Ashish (and Ian), that is exactly what I wanted to know.

I would agree here. I think that the coffee filter can be useful if you’re nervous about decanting your nicely stood up bottle and at the last second having the collected sediment drop into the decanter thereby somewhat nullifying the effort you have gone through. That’s about the only use though, keeping out the mass at the bottom of the bottle.

If you want to understand this better, examine the sediments next time you do this. You’ll see they’re really different from coffee grounds - not very solid at all. Some extremists even like tasting them. I’ve tried it - interesting but not as good as the wine IMHO.

I wondered this same thing as I felt a coffee filter seemed to pick up most sediment I could see on an old wine. However, there was a recent Loire Cab Franc that had visible dark swirls of sediment that the coffee filter would not filter out despite repeated passes. What I do now for old nebbiolo is to stand up the wine, pour it through a coffee filter, and pour out the last couple ounces through the filter into a different vessel… so the wine is not lost and can provide a first taste of the wine.

This is a subset of a recurring question, how long to stand a bottle for the sediment to settle adequately. I’ve never seen a shred of real science on the topic.
I find it really hard to believe that it will take more than a few hours for even fine sediment to fall the 10 or 11 inches (at most) to the bottom of a bottle. My personal observations substantiate this.

The settling time depends on the size and density of the particles (this has been studied although not so much specifically for wine). For many wines, the sediment tends to form into fairly large chunks that settle quickly. Very old Nebbiolo (and sometimes Pinot) can have very fine sediment that takes quite a long time to settle. The other issue with Nebbiolo is that the sediment doesn’t taste very good. Not sure why the sediment size and taste seems to depend on the variety, but in my experience it does.

-Al

Ashish’s comments are my experience as well. Barolo sediment seems to always be at least somewhat bitter, and sometimes incredibly bitter and nasty (in this case, ruining the bottle for me).

Also, all paper coffee filters add a paper taste…it’s better than sediment in the wine, tho coffee filters will let a small bit of sediment through so you’ll get both a bit of sediment + papery-ness. If you go this route, my/others experience is Filtropa filters add the least amt of taste. There are the metal (‘gold’/etc) mesh coffee filters, but those let significantly more sediment through than paper filters do. One thing I’ve always wondered but can’t verify either way: If you’re opening a bottle that has TCA (corkiness) just below the perception limit…will the papery-ness of a coffee filter affect this? Before you roll your eyes at this: lactone, eugenol & guaiacols (all oak flavor compounds) can be below their individual sensory threshold, yet still be perceived in combination (where the combination is above the sensory threshold). Vanillin esp ‘benefits’ from this effect, and is why some wines appear to have so much vanilla (i.e it doesn’t, but the vanilla is being boosted by other ‘similar’ compounds).

Thinking ahead and standing these bottles up a month ahead of time is a real pain in the ass. Then, if the bottle is flawed, not having another properly prepared bottle that has stood for at least a few weeks can be a real problem.
So a strategy that I have developed is in the fall to stand up an array of eligible aged nebbiolos. They can stand all fall and winter and early spring, then be set down again. or you can rotate, so a bottle is only up for a couple of months, then set on it’s side again. That way you are never caught short. and there is really no harm at all to have a bottle upright in a proper cellar fro quite a while.

John, this is exactly my strategy. I have an “on deck circle,” a wine box in a cool closet, where I place bottles which I plan to open soonish.
Not only does this allow sediment to settle without me worrying about it, but it has also served as a motivation for giving my collection some analysis and thought. In other words, it makes me think about what kind of wine I would like to open in the near future. Once I have a case or two selected, I can grab something almost blindly and be reasonable assured that is something that I want to drink right now.

I agree on standing bottles up straight for as long as possible with aged Nebbiolo. I also tend to decant the bottle when opened and then pouring the wine back into the bottle after washing out the sediment. It does add an element of oxidation, but for me that is rarely a problem with Nebbiolo.

I’m with this camp. I arrange wine tastings every so often and had some tastings with quite old Nebbiolo. Some wines have been standing upright for a months, others only for just 24 hours right after I’ve moved the wines into the cellar. Since the people tasting the wines never hear how long the wines have been standing upright before the tasting, I’ve never heard of any complaints of unpleasant deposit or the resulting bitterness.

I do decant the bottles always prior to the tasting, but without any coffee filters or other external aids, save for a metal funnel.

In my opinion there is no need to stand up the bottles. The far easier method is to buy a wine cradle and retrieve the bottle from the cellar in the cradle and decant with the bottle still in that position. I have never had an issue with sediment with this method.

+1

I find coffee filters work for sediment from other grapes, like Cabernet and Syrah, to salvage the dregs, and the filtered wine isn’t undrinkably bitter. But, as Al and others have said, Nebbiolo sediment is both unusually fine and unpleasantly bitter.

FWIW, my experience is certainly not definitive but the old Barolo with problematic sediment that needed special attention were from the 1960s and 1970s, haven’t had nearly the same level of issues with Barolo from the 1990s and 2000s. I’m not sure whether it’s the age or whether it’s from changes in winemaking. Also, I don’t worry about oxidation, the very old Barolo wines seem to need it rather than suffering from it.

-Al

My experience is the same, and I have the same question.

I agree that this is an excellent method, with one caveat on navigating the horizontal transfer from the storage location to the cradle, and removing the horizontal cork…based on the times I’ve been around for this approach.

Al/John: You’re implying that the Barolo ‘wars’ in the 90s/etc created more bottle sediment?

That may be true, but you’re replacing an effective free solution with a solution that requires the purchase of an expensive wine cradle [scratch.gif]