Bordeaux Blend 32One other comment: There is an advantage to having at least one person who does not know what...
Scott Lindner
Maybe if you top up with more wine you could see an increase in body, I suppose. But if you have a 60 gallon keg and need to top up once or twice with a gallon or two, you really are not going to see much of an increase. Of course evaporation is much faster in a 5 gallon barrel.
The problem with not using sulfites in wine is that you cannot in any way control what organisms are going to get into your wine. you do not boil wine must. So whatever was on the grapes will be in the must. whatever is in the oak barrels will be in the must. Sooner or later you will introduce some brett into a barrel or into your winery. Every winery in the world has Brett in it. So if you do nto sulfite well, it will grow on you. In the carboy, in the barrel in the bottle.
The only caveat is to sterile filter the wine at some point (or add a chemical that is not available to home winemakers). Of course, that will remove some of the wine character as well as the Brett. And it really will not help in the oxygen available environment of an oak barrel, which gives Brett plenty of metabolites and places to nest.
I know you personally may not care, but there was a great article in the last issue of Wine Spectator magazine about Brett.
Did they market them as sulfite free? They could have sterile filtered or sold the wine as some sort of "nouveau" wine, which is drank very young. On big problem with contemporary wines is that the fruit is allowed to hang very long on the vine to reduce acidity, which allows Brett to grow. And while it it true that wine has been make for thousands of years, wine as we know it is fairly young. Until pasteur brought us microbiology wine was generally drank very young as most spontaneous fermentations quit at a low alcohol content, and until bottles were made wine had to ber served out of the wooden casks fairly quickly before it spoiled. Wine was also very acidic and for much of its history was mixed with water. the tendency of those casks to spoil after use led to the practice of burning a sulfur candle in them and treating them with what amounted to sulfite.
sulfites other main use as an antioxifdant will be particularly important if you want to make an age worthy wine. wine without sulfite tends to age prematurely.
