NW Winemaking Notes

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Winemaking Articles and Notes

The Nanaimo Winemakers actively promote education about winemaking. Many members experiment with various techniques and others try to keep up on the technical literature and pass along what they learn to fellow members.

General information and techniques

Using sulfite (SO₂) to protect wine. Nothing is more important in winemaking than learning how to use potassium metabisulfite to protect your wine. Includes a convenient chart of the needed additions, organized by the quantities we typically make.

Rehydrating yeast. You get better results by giving your yeast a good start for its life in your wine.

Adding nitrogen to fermentations. Yeast need to be fed. Grape juice seldom has all the nitrogen it needs to ferment cleanly. This note explains how much nutrient to add and when to add it.

YAN Calculator. This is the latest version (October 2009) of the Excel tool the Willem Wyngaards developed on the basis of the previous article. We call it a YAn calculator, but it is really a nitrogen addition calculator. You need to know the YAN of your juice (or make a guess), but the calculator then uses the Brix level of your must and yeast variety to tell you what to do next. Read the previous article first—you should be able to do by hand what the Caculator helps you to do.

Links to useful winemaking information on the web. There is a wealth of information out there. You can can google productively or you can begin with these suggestions, including some free downloadable manuals.

White Wine Making

General articles

Making white wine: the light-bodied, aromatic style. An introduction to the main style of white wine, emphasizing the importance of a cool fermentation, Lysozyme, and finishing the wine quickly and getting it into the bottle.

Making white wine: the full-bodied, wooded style. Oaky, buttery Chardonnay is the classic example of this style. Making this style requires riper grapes, oak, malolatic fermentation and sur lie aging.

Notes

Gewürztraminer: from grapes to juice. If you are starting your white wine from fresh grapes (our Summerland Gewürztraminer, for example) rather than from a pail of juice from a winery, you need to know how to get "settled juice" and to time your "skin contact."

How to keep white fermentations cooler. White wines are always fermented cool, especially aromatic white wines. Here are some tips for how to manage this in your home cellar.

Using Lysozyme. Lysozyme is the "silver bullet" necessary for preventing malolactic fermentations in aromatic white wines. This notes discusses how to prepare and use Lysozyme.

Preventing protein haze. A white wine that was clear once but now is hazy or is hazier when it cold than when it is warm is suffering from protein haze. This is largely an aesthetic problem but one which winemakers try to eliminate. This note explains what home winemakers can do.

Cold stabilization. Cold stabilization is a method of reducing the likelihood of bitatrate crystals ("wine diamonds") forming in wine as it ages. This is particularly important for white wines.

Using potassium sorbate in white wines with residual sugar. White wines often have residual sugar to balance higher acidity or achieve a certain style. Home winemakers commonly use sorbate to prevent these wine from fermenting again in the bottle.