mrkstel
Well-Known Member
So, I screwed up. . . In my haste to get a couple batches of wine into bottles and out of the carboys, it appears that I bottled it either before it was completely done fermenting or I just didn't degas well enough before bottling. No matter how it happened, the wines (Noiret and DeChaunac aged 10 months in bottle) have a definite fizz in the glass and tickle on the tongue. Although the flavor of both wines is pretty nice, the fizz is just distracting and off-putting. I'm trying to figure out how to get rid of the extra gas in suspension. I have considered just transferring the wines from the bottles back into a bucket, degassing the traditional way and then rebottling. However, even if I lay down a blanket of CO2 over the wines, I'm still afraid of oxidizing them. I've also thought about using a sanitized bottle brush to degas bottles one at a time. As well as uncorking each bottle, heating it up to around 100*F and using a wine preserver pump to create a vacuum and suck the gas out of solution. I've tried both methods and neither one works all that well. Not to mention, I worry about the effects of heat on the wine. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might degas these wines? I will try just about anything at this point. Thanks for any help you can offer.