Too much Water 127Each carboy would be filled with wine except the last so they do not need topping.. The last one would ideally be a 1-2 gal...
I am not sure why Jeff Cox said that. The reaction of calcium carbonate in wine is fairly simple and complete. The H ions (the actual active part of that acid) react with the carbonate ions to form CO2 gas and water. The Calcium ions will combine with tartaric acid and precipitate out. there should be no place for an off flavor to occure there.
Unless in his experience he drops out tto much of the tartaric acid, leaving a malic dominated wine, which would taste terrible. The correct thing to do would be to TLC the wine to find out the relative proportions of each acid. If you have a lot of malic acid, calcium carbonate would be unadvisable. It you have mostly tartaric acid, calcium carbonate (or potbuttium carbonate) would work fine for you.
You are right, your sulfite level is too high for MLF. I would not sweeten, that really is out of style for that wine.
If worse comes to worse, get another batch of wine going, do not sulfite it (so you can have it undergo MLF if needed) and then blend the two after any acid adjustment you can do to each. the second batch you would want to knock out as much of the acid as possible so I would use Lalvin 71B-1122 in addition to MLF and cold stabilization.
Franco
