Marquette pretty sour/tart

[primerib]

Hoping to bottle my Marquette from last September soon to make room in the carboys for this year’s batches. First attempt at “real” red wine. Grape selection was not very judicious, literally went with the only vineyard I could find that would sell me a small lot (100ish lbs) of grapes. Grapes tasted great but judging by brix/SG were a tad underripe and as such my resulting wine is quite acidic.

It was oaked over the winter, cold crashed and racked off the resulting acid precipitate, went through malolactic fermentation (presumably anyway. I added MLF culture, never did any high tech monitoring to verify) Smells great, tastes pretty good, but has an undeniable tartness that makes it borderline undrinkable.

I fined it last week with sparkalloid. It’s a bit thin so planning on adding some glycerin for body and hoping the slight sweetness will smooth out the sharp edges.

Other than this, any other possible suggestions? Because of the MLF, it seems sorbate/bscksweetening are out. I’ve read about testing the pH and adding potassium bicarb if it is indeed too acidic. Was hoping there’s one other possible remedy without getting into expensive testing equipment this time around, although it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing to have for next time.

 

[Maylar]

non-fermentable sugar (I use Xylitol) is an option.

 

[primerib]

non-fermentable sugar (I use Xylitol) is an option.

If the glycerin doesn’t do the trick I may consider. Seems kind of unorthodox for a dry red wine but I’m not looking to make it truly sweet, per se, maybe just soften the tartness a bit. might be the trick!

 

[Coffee49]

I had a rougeon juice that had the same symptoms, it had gone through the typical 3 rackings and at the 11 month stage it tasted rather wild, I added S02 bottled and hoped for the best. Some of these dry reds take up to 2 years in the bottle before they are mature. My rougeon was delish 3 years after primary.