Process question (white and red wine)

Hi.
I'm making two grape wines (1 white, 1 red) from Italian juice this year.

I have a process question that I'm hoping to get some input on.
I have both my wines (1 white, 1 red) in 6 gallon buckets with a loose fitting lid.

I dosed them day one with potassium metabisulfate to kill the wild yeast.
Then used go ferm to hydrate my dried yeast and pitched day 2.
I fed the must day 3 with fermaid K.
I fed the must when I hit 1/3 sugar depletion with fermaid K.

It been so long since I made wine from juice, I don't remember what is recommended. I've read recommendations to rouse and not rouse the yeast off the lees with a stir. I have a degasser.

What do people recommend for juice?

I've made wine from cherries, blueberries, raspberries. I always use a bucket with loose fitting lid, punch the cap down until fermentation slows, then transfer to a carboy and top up with water or juice to the carboy neck and age to clarify.

Thanks.

 

I'm a total noob when it comes to wine, but I just did 4 pails and here is what I have done so far. All of my buckets were fermenting within hours of reaching room temp, so I did not treat with kmeta, I pitched starters with Go Ferm. Everything I've read recommends regular stirring, including the lees, during primary fermentation while a CO2 cap is present. This is to both suspend the yeast and oxygenate the must. 1.010 seems to be a decent cutoff point for stirring, YMMV. I have Ferm K, but frankly, it didn't need it and I didn't use it. This stuff had no problem getting below 1.000.

White - Fermented in loose lid bucket with D47. Stirred every day or two while fermenting down to 1.020. There was a lot of gas in the wine. At 1.020 I left it alone until it hit .992. Then racked to glass carboy and treated with K-meta and sorbate according to instructions. I think it was 2g Kmeta and 3 g Sorbate. Waited a few days, clarified with Kieselsol and chitosan. They dropped about an inch of lees in 2 days. I'm going to rack this weekend, clarify with isinglass and let it sit for a couple of months. Surprisingly, this stuff is 17 days old and is already as good as any $10 bottle of pinot grigio I've ever had, and I've had a lot. I plan on drinking this pretty young.

Reds
Same gig, in the pail, loose top, stir regularly, down to 1.010. Racked to secondary and added oak cubes and malo-lacto bacteria. They are all sitting for at least 6 weeks total, topped up and air tight before I treat with Kmeta. No sorbate since it has been through MLF.

I have a nebbiolo (BM45) I plan to let age for a while. So I'll taste for oak and see if it's had enough. I probably won't use any clarifiers.

I have a cab (BM4x4) and merlot (RC212) that I will play with blending. I sampled these before MLF and they will make a really nice blend as well as having some as a varietal. I may use clarifiers on this before blending and more bulk aging. I'll probably have the LBHS wine guru help me with the tasting to get acid balances right. The cheap TA tests aren't that accurate, and I'm not spending the dough on a PH meter either.

 

Zombie post.

I just bottled the Nebbiolo and it turned out great. Smooth , bold, not too dry, opens up nicely. A wine you can share with friends who would not know it's homemade until you tell them. Really happy with this.

Cab is good but haven't bottled it yet and the Merlot is unfortunately a acter-bacter goner.