Chat with Alex Russan

Master the fundamentals (SO2 use, etc)–I somewhat glossed over the basics in search of cutting edge, theoretical information, and eventually found myself scrambling last minute to deal with things that should have been second nature and probably more important for the wine than the theoretical details I was so excited to play with.

One thing I did without realizing it that I think was good was being as careful, clean and neurotic as possible with every step of the process. As I’ve gone on I’ve found where I can loosen up–rather than starting off loose and learning the hard way where I need to do better.

Alex: The ML bacteria won’t help you with the sugar, and sugar is much more dangerous than left over ML at this point (lots of stuff can eat sugar and spoil wine, whereas the lower pH from ML over winter will only help protect the wine, and not as many things eat malic.) I would find a way to heat up the barrel (heating pad below it, heater blowing on it, etc), and would reinoculate with a STRONG fermenter (Saccharomyce Bayanus yeast, DV10 or something like that), you can inoculate with ML bacteria at the same time, but you wanna get the sugar out asap.

I have a Milwaukee one I like a lot, it loses calibration somewhat fast, and seems like it usually is off by .01 or .02, but it works well. Think I paid $125 on amazon. There are some other meters out there that can do multiple things that might be worth looking into.

Oxidation, by far. Always keep carboys topped up full, they should have no more than 1/8″ of space between the top of the wine and the bung–zero space is better. Use marbles to increase volume if you’re out of wine.

Top barrels every two weeks, and minimize opening the bung in between. I’ve started spraying a very strong SO2 spray (couple sprays) into the bung hole every time I open.

Though, the SO2 spray thing is more a bacterial precaution.

Looks like that one is a slow fermenter (did a quick googling), you want something that is going to knock it out as quickly as possible at this point and is a strong fermenter–unless your fermentation stopped from temperature, there could be various reasons for the stuck fermentation, and you want something strong and with a kill factor. Anything for Champagne or that is Saccharmyces Bayanus would be best: EC1118, Prise de Mousse, DV10, etc are what you want. Also, do not add nutrients at this point, as any left overs can cause odors or feed Brett.

I’ve never had personal experience with smoke taint, however, imagine that it would be apparent immediately, unless it was subtle.

(If it was subtle, I’m thinking the intensity of post fermentation aromas could eclipse it), but I have a feeling if it was there, you’d smell it right away.

You’re very welcome. You should be fine, with the wine so cold right now, bacteria that could damage should be mostly inactive. When you heat up and inoculate, hopefully the yeast will out compete anything that’s present. I’d heat up to at least 65 or 70 if you can for the yeast.

Wes Hagen always puts a prophylactic dose of copper sulfate into his white musts before fermentation. You could also try (perhaps you already are though) oxidizing your must–w the reds you’re getting oxygen into the ferment (which yeast need) every time you punch down, but as you don’t do that with whites, they only have the air that comes in with the must. Don’t worry if the must browns, all the compounds that oxidize prior to fermentation will precipitate out during fermentation, and as a result of having fewer oxidizable compounds in your wine, it might extend it’s life too!

One question first–what style of wine?

Sterile filtration or lysozyme. Lysozyme is good for a few years in bottle, but you should be fine, especially if you store it cool. Also, maintain .8 molecular in the wine prior to bottling and at bottling.

Yeah, you can do it with any wine, just make sure you top up–with sherries, the barrels are never filled, but they’re protected either by flor yeast or alc level. Look for Primativo Quiles, I believe they make some solera aged red table wines from Monastrell (Mourvedre). Pluses, I’ve heard that young wine takes on the characteristics of old wine quickly when blended together, so if you’re bottling a little each year and putting in young wine, you’ll have a steady supply of wine with aged characteristics at home. I’ve only heard this, and do not have any science to support it. I honestly can’t think of any drawbacks, I think it would be a really cool thing to try.

Might take up a lot of space is the only thing, especially if you have a proper solera system with criaderas of increasingly older wine leading up to your solera barrels with the oldest wine that you bottle from. If you are doing it with old wine, when racking old wine, you might get some oxidation from the air exposure, so I’d try to do so as reductively as possible with older wine.

If Im remembering right, a wine just out of fermentation can absorb something like 60 barrel equivalents of oxygen, but after a year, it’s a fraction of that, and the longer you age, the less it can handle without oxidizing.

If you’re buying it new, you want to keep it short, the smaller the barrel, the higher the ratio of surface area to wine volume, thus the faster the wine will take on oak character–it could get intense fast. If they’re big and structured wines, maybe 2-3 months?–if you have more wine than the 10 gallons, say 30 gallons, you can swap out what’s in the barrel with what you have in carboys, or, just leave the wine in barrel and blend with wine in carboys later if the oak gets intense.

Make sure to keep the barrel protected when it’s empty, ether frequent sulfur burning, or, even better in my opinion, a holding solution, for a 10 gal, maybe a half cup of citric and a quarter cup of SO2, keep topped, then give a good rinse before putting wine in the following year. If you take care of the barrel it’ll last forever, and you can use oak chips for flavor–no need to ever replace a healthy barrel.

I’m trying to pay more attention to tannins. As a taster I’m 95% paying attention to my nose, and maybe 5% to my tongue. This very indulgent, as most of my customers won’t be tasting that way, so I should make more of an effort to ensure delightful tannins. Im getting more and more interested in tannin structuring, so would like to follow their progression more, and take more detailed steps with regard to ML timing, oxygen exposure, lees removal and return, etc, to help develop them.

I wanted cooler fermentations for a long time, and finally this year got a cooling plate from Morewinemaking.com for about 200 bucks that works amazingly with my tiny glycol chiller ($880 or so from Rapids restaurant supply).

I personally would not, but I don’t oak or non-wine flavors in my wine, and Im guessing that the ex-bourbon barrel would impart a whiskey flavor to the wine, and likely also have a heavy char to it that it would impart–if it’s something you like, or you’re willing to risk having 50 bottles of wine you may not like, may be worth a shot. Probably safer to buy a wine that had a spirit in it rather than wine, from a microbial perspective.

I’ll jump in here and say we ran an article on this topoc not too long ago: https://winemakermag.com/ar…

Actually, if you have the option, you could fill the barrel with water, wait a day or two, then taste the water, and that would give you some sense of what kind of aromas you’l get.

Any idea why? Heavy char barrel? Smoke taint? Only think I can think of that might be similar to that might be H2S or mercaptans?