Cold stabilization
involves putting the wine that has finished fermenting into an
environment that has a temperature between +4 celcius and -4 celcius.
The cold temperature chills the wine and the tartaric acid begin to form
into crystals and collects on the walls and bottom of the carboy. The
photo shows the crystals that have formed and stuck to the wall of the
carboy. We will stir the wine a few days before siphoning it off and the crystals will fall to the bottom and settle out.
These
crystals are sometimes referred to as wine diamonds and even commercial
wines will have the crystals in the bottom of a bottle if the wine hasn't been cold stabilized. What this
means is that the wine was not initially cold stabilized but somewhere
along the way it got exposed to cold temperatures and as a result the
crystals formed and settled at the bottom of the bottle. When you pour
out that last bit of wine from the bottle its followed by these grainy
crystals that you really don't want to drink. So we cold stabilize to
lower the acid but also I don't want these crystals forming sometime
later.
Next we will siphon the wine into a new carboy
and add a bit of sulphite and sorbate. We also take a bit out to
sweeten with sugar. We will add that sweetened wine back in with the
rest of the wine and the sorbate inhibits it from fermenting. Were
pretty much done after that, just need to bottle and lable.
