I’ve tried to restart my stuck Syrah three times. Got it down from 4 brix to 2.
Has anyone taken a stuck wine and made a port from it?
Thinking that might be the best hope for this stuff.
Making a Port-style wine if you’re already down to 2 brix is probably not your best bet. You’d usually want to do that by fortifying at considerably higher brix, maybe 10-12 range. I wouldn’t give up yet on getting it to go dry. Keep it protected from oxygen and be patient. Have you tried warming up the fermentation? Put it in a warm room, put an electric blanket over it, etc. - I’ve seen lots of ways to do this depending on how larger your fermentation vessel is.
Sorry to hear this is still giving you problems.
Another option is encapsulated yeast. The yeast is inside beads (I forget what they’re made of), sugar gets into the beads for the yeast to ferment, but other yeast inhibiting things (too much alcohol, va, etc) can’t. More Wine (various locations around the bay area) sells this for $35…they seem to be out of stock, but you might check if/when they’ll get it in.
If I’m remembering correctly, Ken Zinns and the Gang Of 6+N used the dessert wine version of this product quite a long time ago…right Ken?
You’re right, Eric - we used a type that was recommended for sweet wines on a late-harvest Roussanne that was loaded with botrytis, back in 2006. The advantage of the encapsulated yeast for that is you can pull it out when the wine reaches the sugar level you want. In our case it stalled out short of where we wanted it (fruit picked at 44 brix, target was about 21, stalled around 27-28).
Didn’t know they made encapsulated Uvaferm 43 but that does seem like it might be worth a shot.