Make carbonated/sparkling red?

[HappyWarrior]

This week I will be bottling a red and wondering if I can add bottling sugar, as I do with my beer, to make a few bottles of sparkling red wine?

 

[cla]

I have had a few that unintentionally had some carbonation in them. I didn't have any bad results but From what i hear it is easy to have exploding bottles if you don't know what you are doing..

 

[revco]

I've actually been thinking along these same lines, and was about to post a similar question. I had a red champagne down in Mexico that I loved and haven't been able to find anything even remotely close stateside. (I do live in Montana, not exactly wine country, so maybe that's no surprise.)

My thoughts along these lines would be to ferment out a relatively fruity blend or varietal kit, as I think that offers a lot to the style. I'm also thinking backsweetening with maybe a can, tops, of grape concentrate to add a bit of sweetness (also something I personally enjoy)...but that presents some challenges to the natural carbonation technique...so I would probably opt to keg the batch. You can backsweeten in bottles if you properly heat pasteurize after Co2 has developed, but I wouldn't think this would be necessary if you don't sweeten the final product, since there would be very little residual sugar remaining after the Co2 sugar was consumed.

I would be curious if anyone's had experience here they could share as I'm rather interested as well.

 

[browning348]

I have a strawberry/banana/grape blend that's about a week into secondary. I want to do the same thing with a portion of it once it's finished. What if you bottled it with used craft beer bottles or champagne bottles? Aren't those bottles made to take the pressure?

 

[PosterGuy]

You just need champagne bottles, champagne corks, and corker that will accommodate them (unless you use plastic stoppers).

You are essentially doing the same thing with beer, but sparkling wines are usually carbed up to much higher volumes.
Dangerous?
The pros wear protective suits when working in the conditioning cellar.

 

[Yooper]

You can bottle carbonated wine in beer bottles, no problem.

Just like with beer, ferment it out and then add your priming sugar.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind- making a carbonated sweet wine requires some extraneous measures (like bottle pasteurization or kegging). Making a carbonated dry wine is simple and easy, just like making carbonated hard cider.

 

[browning348]

Just read the forum on bottle pasteurizing. Seems simple enough. What is the sugar/water ratio when making the priming solution?

 

[browning348]

Or do you just add granulated sugar to the bottle?