Wow...I made good wineI opened a bottle of my apple-mango-pbuttion fruit made from Old Orchard frozen concentrate last night and was really...
Well, after replacing my overly concentrated solution of sodium hydroxide from my friends at Carlson, I measured my wine (Cabernet-Merlot) with a standardized solution and I got 0.87%. The wine tasted harsh, but without having any tasting experience, I didn't know what the cause was. The wine comes from a kit, and it had a good amount of SO2 to start with, so I don't think that I could induce malolactic fermentation. I recently measured SO2 with a breastret and I got 60 ppm. Also, I already cold stabilized it and got some potasium bitartrate to precipitate. I guess that one of my options is to use some base (calcium carbonate?) to neutralize acid, but if I recall correctly, Cox in his book "From vines to wines" says that calcium carbonate makes the wine "downright undrinkable". Should I also try to add some sugar to balance the acid? If so, how much sugar should I add? I guess the least invasive method would be to blend it with some other wine with low acidity, but I just don't have six gallons of anything else. This is my first batch. What are your suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Franco
