Calling all wine-making buffs, advice needed!

[MaryContrary]

Hi all, have finally got round to dealing with that ignored demi-john of unracked apple wine that's been sitting in a cupboard for much too long. I racked it today, leaving behind a good inch of yucky sediment...as it's been a few months I reckon it's a lost cause, I imagine the sediment has tainted the 'wine', haven't got the courage to taste it but it smelled pretty pungent, a bit yeasty still! Now it's been racked there is about 4 inches of space at the top, should I top it up with some apple juice and see what happens, or just leave well alone, or just pour down the sink?!

[andyt]

Try topping up with a water/sugar solution - 3ozsugar/half-pint water. Top up to the neck(not yours!) ...... you don't want too much of an air-space.It start slowly to ferment after a day or so(should).

[MaryContrary]

Ta for the advice, will give it a try : )

[MKG]

Hate to disagree, but if you do that at this stage and there's any yeast in there at all, you're likely to start a very weak and slow fermentation which will go on for months and add no more than another 0.2% or so to the alcohol content. As long as there wasn't too much apple pulp in the must (and at only an inch of lees, that sounds like the case), you'd be surprised how long you can leave it on the lees without any taint occurring.

Certainly top it up with either water or STERILE apple juice. But remember that apples and apple juice (and thus apple wine) oxidise at the drop of a hat - this is definitely a case for Campden tablets.

There's nothing poisonous in your wine - the best way to judge it is to taste it. Smell is misleading at this stage because it was still on the lees recently and WILL smell yeasty. That will die away in short order. But do be prepared for a slight shock - apple wine fermented to absolute dryness is usually pretty awful. You'll probably need to sweeten it to make it acceptable, but don't do that unless you're either going to drink the sweetened bottle right away or, if you want to sweeten the whole lot, unless you're certain that it's as stable as it's possible to be.

Oh, and chill it before you drink it. Properly sweetened and chilled, apple wine is delicious.

[MaryContrary]

Thanks for this can you run it by me again?!

Now that it's spent the day settling after racking, have poured a bit into a glass, up against the light it looks like a slightly hazy urine sample...and tastes DRY, quite sour, not at all sweet, actually not unlike bad Calvados, so what do you suggest? Sweeten it up?

[MaryContrary]

Actually it's not Calvados it smells like, it smells just like a really dry sherry! ?????????????????

[MKG]

Brilliant descriptions. The sherry smell is because it's oxidised to some extent - sherry is deliberately oxidised. The use of Campden tablets at racking would have prevented that - but some people like it. The slightly hazy urine sample appearance is common with apple wine - it's a pectin haze (completely harmless). Apples are probably the best source of pectin readily available. You can avoid the haze by adding a pectic-destroying enzyme at the start of fermentation but, apart from aesthetics, it doesn't really matter.

Now the judgement call - yes, I'd sweeten it. How much to sweeten depends upon your own tastes. Half the fun in winemaking is this kind of thing - by the time you've decided on the level of sweetness, you could be pi***d as the famous newt. The good point is that you haven't identified any off tastes, so the wine is perfectly sound.

You have a choice. You can top it up (or pipe some carbon dioxide to fill the space by utilising a vigorously-fermenting wine you have in another demijohn) and leave it for a little while longer - but it's already oxidising. You can add a Campden tablet to prevent further oxidation, top up and leave it for even longer. You can sweeten the entire batch and run the risk of the fermentation restarting. Or you can bottle it and leave the sweetening to each individual bottle as you open it (but bottling will introduce yet more oxygen unless those Campden tablets are put to use).

All of that, of course , assumes that your sweetening agent will be sugar. If you use sweetener tabs, there's no risk of re-fermentation at all.

Apple wine (without any oxygen in it) improves for about a year, stays stable for about two years, and then begins to deteriorate. Within that timescale, the world's your oyster, so to speak.

[MaryContrary]

Thanks MKG, think I'm starting to get the hang of this...

...if just add sugar dissolved in water to top up, will this do the trick?

[MaryContrary]

...and how long would I leave it after this?

[MKG]

I wouldn't - this is where I disagreed with Andy (and Andy probably disagrees with me - it's the way of such things). I'd just use plain water - it makes very little difference, regardless of the natural "but that's weakening it" reaction. I would also add a Campden tablet, but that's up to you. Leave it for another month or two (apple wine matures fairly rapidly) then taste it again. If it tastes the same, then no amount of maturation is going to improve it. If it tastes better, leave it for a little longer and taste again - you get the picture. And note that you haven't sweetened anything - yet. It's part of the game that you learn to judge what a sweetened wine will be like by tasting the unsweetened version.

The other thing you must do is watch it - if it casts a deposit, there's still some active yeast and it needs to be racked again.

At the point where you decide that there's been no substantial change, it's bottling (or even drinking) time. If you decide to bottle it, I'd add yet another Campden tablet (the effects dissipate over time) before doing so. And this is the point where you would use sugar syrup in carefully measured amounts to sweeten the wine - not before (the point being that, as time passes, you become more and more confident that there's no yeast left in there to ferment the added sugar).

There are two ways of looking at winemaking. Some people want to produce fine wines worthy of gentle nurturing and years of maturation. Others just want to produce cheap but acceptable booze. I do make about 5 gallons a year of the (hopefully) good stuff, but the rest of the wine I make falls adamantly into the second group. And because of this, it doesn't get bottled at all. It stays in the demijohn and is poured out at about a bottleful at a time and drunk immediately. A gallon, if it's really nice, may last a week or a fortnight (not all for me, I hasten to add). All of the time I'm doing this, it's oxidising - but a week of oxidation makes hardly any difference to a cheap and cheerful wine, and if it goes too far, I chuck the rest out because there's another one coming into the pipeline.

I don't think this is wasteful, because I rarely throw any wine out at all.

But you need to make up your mind, for any particular batch of wine, what your intentions are. If you decide to go the fine wine route, then I really cannot see (at this moment in time) any alternative for you but to accept the use of metabisulphite (you can make good wine without it, but it's a hitty-missy affair) because there are so many things that can go wrong without it. If you decide on the booze route ... well ... Cheers.

[MaryContrary]

Ta for this, am definitely going down the 'is there anything to drink in the house' route with this one! Will let you know how it goes.