A couple months ago, after a few sips of a cloying Spätlese, I poured the remainder into a Grolsch-style beer bottle (with sealing top) and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday I came across it again and noticed some sediment in the bottom. Opened it to discover a fizzy, and relatively delicious, dryer Spätlese!
My question is, how do I encourage this refermentation?
I have other Rieslings in the same Grolsch-style beer bottles, for longer periods, under the same storage conditions, that haven’t refermented. All advice welcome!
The potential problem here is all yeasts are not equal. Some yeasts die as the alcohol rises. Most beer yeast will not bring a typical wine to dryness.
Sounds like the wine that underwent another fermentation still had some live yeast in it which is fairly rare. Also yeast needs some air so if you do find it fermenting and want it to continue, don’t be afraid to ‘burp’ your fermentation vessel/bottle. You’ll also want temps of at least 68-70 f. If there’s live yeast, some sugar, air and warm enough temps, it should go.
My local beer homebrewing shop carries a variety of yeasts, including yeasts for winemaking. If this were my project, I would probably make a trip to the homebrew shop and ask for suggestions on what yeast would be appropriate. I’m guessing maybe a Champagne yeast? But that’s just a guess.
You could also pick up a stopper and airlock for a couple bucks if you don’t want to turn your flat Riesling into Sekt.
Please be sure to post an update here if you actually follow through on this. I’d love to hear your results!
It wasn’t completely dry, more like a fizzy Spätlese Feinherb. I was really surprised by how much it improved. It went from being nearly undrinkable to quite good. Really hoping to being able to do it again without too much effort.
I have about 10 bottles that I can’t drink due to out-of-balance sweetness, so I’m definitely going to try again. Going to wait until the weather warms, but I’ll certainly update when I can.
I don’t know if it actually refermented or if they sponti like fizz just evaporated or blew off. I have unintentionally left riesling bottles in the fridge for months and have been shocked at how good they were when I take sip while pouring down the drain.
Sometimes your “happy accident” happens all on its own. I have run across it multiple times from different producers.
I do wonder (again) about your “cloying” and “out of balance sweetness” comments. I suspect you should not be buying Spätlese to begin with as you clearly prefer drier wines.
That would be particularly rare in a sweet wine, no? I thought you had to either dose it with sulfur (the old method) or filter or do something to eliminate the risk of refermentation in the bottle.
It does happen though. Had it occur with Christoffel, Schmitt-Wagner, Von Hovel, and Darting (and of course there was the bad run at Egon Müller - 1999 IIRC - many years ago).
This. Happens sometimes, though very rarely these days. Filters break or get installed improperly. Ideally you have the QC protocol in place to identify problems before releasing wines to the market, but sometimes things slip through.
As for the idea of inoculating the wine to referment, that’s fine but it will likely go completely dry, which you may not want.
Yes, especially for something like sweets where the possibility of continued fermentation is possible. As long as the yeast have nutrients (carbs/sugars, oxygen, and so on) they will multiply at proper temps so it’s imperative to get them out of the wine before bottling.
The classic case is the home winemaker with gushing or even exploding bottles.
Yeah, I’ve come across more Spätlese (and Auslese) bottles I thought were overly-sweet as opposed to properly-balanced. It’s really a shame, because the good ones are REALLY good. The problem is I went a little overboard on Winebid last year when that big drop happened (late January IIRC?) before I had ever even tasted one (I know, I know). FOMO was strong with that one.
I think I’m going to list them in the Commerce Corner, as I certainly don’t want to wait 20+ years for the sweetness to mellow.
Unfortunately it was one of the few bottles I didn’t get around to labeling after transferring it to the Grolsch bottle. Judging by the color (and taste), I’d guess it was 15-20 years old.
Yeah, and that is much more likely in a spontaneous referment where you have a pretty small, geriatric yeast population that just eats through a little more sugar and then gives up. Which is a shame because it makes it hard to reproduce!
