Blackberry wine

I have a 30 gal barrel with Blackberry wine in it. Long story short, my brother-in-law is moving and I have no room for the barrel so I transferred the wine into 5 and 6 gallon carboys to finish it out. It is has been cooking for 5 months now. I tasted it when I was putting it in the carboys and it smells good and does not taste too bad but it is tart.
Do I just let it keep aging and hope it taste better or do you all recommend adding something?

cwebb said:

I have a 30 gal barrel with Blackberry wine in it. Long story short, my brother-in-law is moving and I have no room for the barrel so I transferred the wine into 5 and 6 gallon carboys to finish it out. It is has been cooking for 5 months now. I tasted it when I was putting it in the carboys and it smells good and does not taste too bad but it is tart.
Do I just let it keep aging and hope it taste better or do you all recommend adding something?

Click to expand...

I recommend letting it age. The tartness is from the citric/malic acid of the berries and will mellow with 6 months to a year of aging (beyond your current 5 months , fyi) .

Or, you could add a bit of potassium bicarbonate which will attach to the acid aand drop it out of the wine. That's faster, but is a bit unpredictable. You can overcompensate.

Hope this helps!

Did he make any adjustments during the time he had the wine? Being this is five months old, and assuming this is dry, you can check your numbers and decide if you want to act sooner or later. Some prefer to adjust preferment while others wait until closer to bottling time. Do not forget if any will be backsweetened this will also help balance that acidity.

Yooper can you weigh in on this

cwebb said:

Yooper can you weigh in on this

Click to expand...

It's about 5 months old? If so, it could just need some more time. Blackberries are tart when the sugar ferments out, so you may considering sweetening when you bottle if you don't like it that dry.

Is it completely clear, and no longer dropping any sediment? If it is, another way to get rid of some of the tartness is to 'cold stabilize' it. That is, put it somewhere very cold (but above freezing!) for a couple of months. Often, excess acid (primarily tartaric acid, but others also) will drop out. That is sometimes enough to fix it.

Also, I have a heavier bodied blackberry that I oaked, and it was great as a result. If you have a carboy to experiment with, you could try adding an ounce of medium toast American oak chips and then sampling in a month. It turned out for me to be one of my finest ever- an oaked, unsweetened heavy bodied blackberry wine.

It really depends on the recipe used, because a light bodied blackberry wine is often better a bit sweetened while a heavy bodied blackberry wine may turn out great dry.

I want it sweet. It does not taste too dry right now. How do you recommend me sweetening?

The oak proposed by Yooper can impart a sweet vanilla tone to wines. If a fuity sweetness is desired, you can look to concentrates of a flavor that works (in your case blackberry). If a simple sweetness is called for, using a backsweetening technique and adding sugar or a juice that compliments your wine (say grape juice or wine conditioner).