I made some Zin this year to make some mistakes and learn from them. Mistakes were made. ABV came in very high at 17.5% with 3g/L RS remaining. I ended up with a full barrel and a full 15.5 Gal. keg after press.
I did my calculations for water additions to bring everything down to 16% but I believe I messed up the proportions and I now have a barrel and a keg at different ABVs. Since ML has been very sluggish in both vessels I now want to drop the alcohol again down to 15-15.5%. I want to homogenize the barrel and keg so the I can get an accurate ABV measurement, but I am worried about exposing the wine to too much oxygen and causing VA levels to rise. It was already at about 1 g/L Acetic after the primary halted itself.
I’m looking for suggestions on how to get a proper sample to measure ABV. I’ll take any other suggestions on how to remedy the situation and get a speedy ML completion.
i learned some lessons about how how uneven Zin ripeness can be…4 days into fermentations and my brix was still increasing. You live and you learn
If you only need a representative sample, just take a proportional volume from each vessel according to its size and combine them. If your barrel is 60 gallons, for example, take 80 mL from that and 20 mL from your keg.
Wow this is a painfully simple solution lol I feel silly. Inoculated for ML. Going off chromatography it was about halfway through 2 weeks ago. Some VA is okay I’m just worried about it getting out of hand before I’m able to add SO2
What do you inoculate with? It’s half way through but is it moving? I would generally expect an inoculated MLF to finish in 2-4 weeks if your temp is above 60.
Ill have to ask the winemaker which one specifically he ordered but it was a strain that is resilient to lower pH. The high alcohol seems to be slowing it down considerably
How does the wine taste? If it’s not overly hot and acidic, why not SO2 it and live with the RS and malate? I understand that stability can be an issue post-bottling (considering sterile filtering), but with 1.0 g/L VA, alcohol that high, three grams of sugar coupled being this far out, it may be time to pull the ripcord. If it tastes good, do not worry about the numbers. Water adds this late into elevage should be avoided. Maybe blend it down with your 2026 Zinfandel!
Hey David thanks for the interest. I ended up using ML prime like Ben suggested and its been eating its way though the malic pretty well. Will probably be finished in 7-14 days. I was able to drop the abv to 15ish. The water additions might have been a little late but i only noticed a small loss in mouth feel, the flavor is still pretty concentrated. The grapes were obviously quite ripe so the peppery Zin character is subtle and the wine is loaded with blue/purple/black fruit. I really want the wine to finish ML because it is quite tart, I will need to reduce the acid eventually anyway.
Luckily the VA has been sitting steady where its at, the water additions really helped dilute and soften the VA and the RS impact. I’m keeping a close eye on the ML progress so ill be ready to add S02 ASAP.
This was a learning experience for me so I don’t really care if the wine has some faults, better to make mistakes now instead of on someone else’s dime. I’m happy to experiment and manipulate the wine a bit to learn!