landwaster
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- May 7, 2013
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So I made some wine from Chilean juice with my cousins for the first time on our own last spring. The fermentation didn't quite finish (they are around 1.008 - 1.010). The wines taste slightly sweet. We'll probably throw in some yeast to try to finish them up. I had started a previous thread about this here.
This past fall we were late to the game and got a variety of Italian juices that were already naturally fermenting. So we pitched in Lalvin RC212 and let them go. We tasted them recently after 3-4 months and they also seem slightly sweet like the last batch (to varying degrees). Now, the carboys were split between me and my cousin. The carboys my cousin kept are at 1.000 - 1.008, the temperature in his cellar is a chilly 55 though I believe he had a space heater. The carboys I kept at my house were upstairs at 58-68F for about a month as they fermented and added ML bacteria. According to my notes from when I racked them, they were down to .996 and .998. The other day I tasted one of these carboys and it also seemed slightly sweet!
So now I'm really confused because all these different batches seem to be coming out with the same sort of sweet taste. At first I thought it was because they weren't fermenting to complete dryness, but that theory seems to be out the window since my own recent batch tastes similar. Am I just uneducated as to what young wines taste like? Or is there something else afoot?
This past fall we were late to the game and got a variety of Italian juices that were already naturally fermenting. So we pitched in Lalvin RC212 and let them go. We tasted them recently after 3-4 months and they also seem slightly sweet like the last batch (to varying degrees). Now, the carboys were split between me and my cousin. The carboys my cousin kept are at 1.000 - 1.008, the temperature in his cellar is a chilly 55 though I believe he had a space heater. The carboys I kept at my house were upstairs at 58-68F for about a month as they fermented and added ML bacteria. According to my notes from when I racked them, they were down to .996 and .998. The other day I tasted one of these carboys and it also seemed slightly sweet!
So now I'm really confused because all these different batches seem to be coming out with the same sort of sweet taste. At first I thought it was because they weren't fermenting to complete dryness, but that theory seems to be out the window since my own recent batch tastes similar. Am I just uneducated as to what young wines taste like? Or is there something else afoot?
