Wine flat with no aroma after 6 months??????

[Mark Kissel]

Hi All,

I have been making wine in the kit form for about 7 months. Mostly all dry reds. Some are great while some, have now have lost a great deal of flavor and aroma after aging for 5-6 months. The only thing I can come up with is too much exposure to air in the process. This I attribute to open fermentation with wines kits with skins. I think I waited too long after primary to rack off and put in a sealed carboy. When these were put into bottles however, they tasted great, lovely aromas and flavor only to be very flat 6 months later. I have just ordered a kit to check the amount of free SO2 to adjust the amount of K-meta prior to bottling. Anyone experience this and thoughts on what might cause this issue?
Thanks, I have learned much from reading this forum, but always more to learn.

Mark

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Mark - and welcome. Sorry about your experience with the kits you are making. Are these kits "low end" (inexpensive) or high end? If they came with skins I would think that they are high end. I have made a couple of kits in my "career" as a wine/mead maker (I prefer country wines and meads to grape wines) so my experience is very limited with kits but I doubt that their lack of zing is caused by too much exposure to the air during active fermentation. Do you have a pH meter? Do you know the TA of those wines? I think "flatness" is usually a sign that the TA is too low. You want a TA of about 6.5g of acid/liter of wine. (pH is a measure of the strength of the acids , not the amount of acid in solution). But the thing is that kits are usually (always?) made so that TA etc is not going to need tweaking, though you might prefer the metrics to be slightly different. But flat and tasteless is not a case of preferred tweaking (in my opinion). That's a fault in the kit (or perhaps in your protocol) Did you follow the manufacturers instructions precisely? If so, you might call the maker of those kits.

 

[Mark Kissel]

Thanks for the info. I would bet a high end one; wine expert Limited edition Italy Piedmont Barbaresco Style 6gal kit. Unfortunately, did not record the PH, but all my kits seam to be in the mid 3.x range. I am doing another one of these now, 2 days in. Thought it was a Wonderfull wine right before bottling, but died with age. Can check the ph of a bottle I still have if that means much 6 months later. TA? total alkalinity? Have to research that. As for following directions, maybe too much. Used a large "WineEasy" SS pot to do primary for, per directions, 14 days. At that point, pressed skins into carboy and started stabilizing/degassing step. I think most of the CO2 dissipated and exposed too much air to the musk over 14 days. Filtered/bottled and it tasted great though! Finding that winemaking IS quite an art....but most of my mistakes are not that bad to drink....

 

[bernardsmith]

TA is titratable acidity. You measure that by adding enough of a specific alkaline base (.1 N sodium hydroxide) to a sample of the wine (10ml) until the pH reading is 8.2 That amount of the base tells you the TA of the wine (Another less exact method is to use the same process but use a color indicator that will change color at the same pH. The problem is that the color change is to red and if you are measuring a red wine then determining that the change has occurred is not easy, and if you are measuring a white wine , it is easier to see the color change but it's still very hard to determine when that change has actually taken place).

 

[RPh_Guy]

I'm not an expert on wine flavors but I have some ideas to explore.

I'm not so sure the acidity is to blame. It should not change over a 6 month period in the bottle.
Also, the kit maker adjusts the acid beforehand, so it hopefully doesn't need an adjustment by the user. Not sure if that's always the case though.

My guess is that it's something to do with oxygen or sulfite level.
It's mainly the post-fermentation oxygen that causes changes in flavor.
I think I read somewhere that high sulfite levels can also mute flavor.

Blandness can result from mild cork taint. Low levels of TCA mask flavor.

A microbial contamination is another possibly. If the sulfite level is low or you have some hardy bacteria, MLF might be reducing the fruitiness of the wine and altering the acid profile.

You should be measuring pH for every wine. You can't properly adjust sulfite levels without knowing it.
What sulfite testing kit did you get? I just got one myself, using aeration-oxidation method. It's by far the most accurate and precise and it's useful for all types of wine (and beer!).

 

[Mark Kissel]

Ph of the wine after six months on the shelf @ 55 degrees is 3.7 using a digital gauge.....for what its worth.
Cork Taint, I would think maybe a bottle or two, but all.....and I sanitize everything from filtering to bottles and EVEN the corks with StarSan. I use bottled water to make the wine, as i am on well water.....always dicy.
The last bit is the trick. I just follow directions, as a newbe not knowing any better. They say to simply add 1/4tsp K-meta at bottling. Just ordered a kit to check free SO2 to better adjust the amount of K-meta at bottling. Did not see too many options out there so, ordered this one Accuvin Free SO2 Test Kit. Not heard of the aeration-oxidation method, if you could direct me to more info on that, would be great.
thanks again for the input.
Mark

 

[RPh_Guy]

3.7 (3.6 corrected for temperature) is a bit high.

Entire batches can be contaminated with cork taint, but I agree it doesn't seem as likely if all the bottles are the same. It was just a thought.

Here's a good article that discusses the methods for testing free SO2 and other useful stuff:
https://winemakermag.com/technique/1365-in-the-wine-lab

 

[Mark Kissel]

Thanks for everyone's input. I will be curious (and I will Post) the amount of free SO2 in the wine that is loosing its pop when the kit shows up. Might help solve the mystery.

 

[bernardsmith]

I would measure the TA. You want it to be about 6 - 6.5g/L If it is well below that then the wine might taste flat. But if it is well below that then that is a problem with the kit and not anything that you have done - in my opinion.

 

[Seamonkey84]

But if it is well below that then that is a problem with the kit and not anything that you have done - in my opinion.

Only thing I could think of is if more water was added than the directions called for, including if any topping off was done after racking.

 

[Mark Kissel]

all good stuff. Again, since I did not check free SO2 or TA before bottling, the addition of 1/4 TSP of K-meta at bottling was a guess. Here's a question, if I open a bottle of wine 6 months in, and the flavor is ok, but the free SO2 comes up zero, could I inject a measured amount of Kmeta to any remaining bottles to preserve them? Anyone ever tried something like that? quite radicle I guess.....

 

[RPh_Guy]

I wouldn't bother with that. Just make improvements with the next batch.

Oxidized wine really isn't THAT bad, just different.

 

[Mark Kissel]

thanks for the reply Seamonkey, I actually use glass beads to top off carboys. Not a fan of buying bottles of wine to top off or diluting it. Good thought though