Wine Wizard

Though I’m no medical doctor (and certainly don’t play one on TV), from what research I was able to pull together, if I personally had a shellfish allergy I would feel comfortable

Indeed, after using most fining agents there will be a layer of sediment generated and you’ll need to rack the wine off of it accordingly. Fining agents, by definition, are introduced into

Red wines are typically not fined as often as white wines, to which we often add bentonite in order to remove potentially haze-causing proteins. The tannin from the skins of red wines

Well, an old-timer winemaker I used to work with would say, “The most natural fining agent for any wine is time.” What he meant was that with time, solids fall out, proteins

Even my “purist” winemaking friends usually aren’t opposed to doing a little egg white fining when it comes to smoothing out the rough edges on their big reds. It’s an ancient and

The fun of filtration! I’ll deliver the bad news to you and my readers first by telling you that really no matter how tight of a pore size you use to filter

Wine, as I’ve often written, is a complex chimerical soup. Wine naturally contains lots of different amino acids and some of those amino acids are in long-chain form and actually are proteins.

Since 1992 (over 20 years) is quite a long time to store bottled wine. If you go to a supermarket or liquor store, you’ll notice that most red wines currently on the

Egg whites are an ancient, traditional and natural additive and are sometimes used to pull excessive tannins out of wine in a gentle treatment process known as “fining.” Practiced for centuries all

Is the salmonella (commonly associated with eggs) a problem to consider when fining with egg whites? Bob McKee Tucker, Georgia Egg whites are an ancient, traditional and natural additive and are sometimes

For readers who don’t know, adding a solution of egg whites to wine does a nice job of pulling out excess tannins and phenolics that might cause your wine to be overly

Wine Wizard replies: Absolutely. There are an increasing number of filters out there for the small-scale producer. From rough filters that’ll just knock out large, visible particles all the way down to

Clarifying elderflower wine I made some elderflower wine last year and have now decanted it into bottles. It is very cloudy. What would you recommend to make it clear, please? Huw M.

Shellfish and chitosan We’ve all heard of comments about sulfites or phenolic compounds causing headaches, but I use chitosan and kielsosol for clarifying agents. Chitosan is made from shellfish byproducts — could

The short answer to your question is: 0.45 micron nominal filter pads are the industry standard for “sterile” filtration. These pads prevent all yeast and bacteria from getting through. So, if you

Dear Wine Wizard, I used isinglass as a clarifier in my Viognier. I have it in a 55-gallon plastic food-grade barrel. It started to settle out some of the particles but never

To filter or not to filter, that is the question. For the home winemaker it often is less a question of quality than a question of cash flow or wanting to be

Dear Wine Wizard, After I stabilized my wine, I added French medium toast oak beans to the Chardonnay 3/4 cup (new beans), Sauvignon Blanc 1/3 cup (new beans), Ruisseau Blanc 3/4 cup

Sometimes commercial wineries chill their for months in the 30-degree Fahrenheit range and still get “tartrate fallout.” Even if a wine has been “cold stabilized,” as this process is called, there’s no

You’ve got a case of the common “tartrate fall-outs.” The “fine sand” sediment you’re seeing in your bottled Concord wine is probably small tartrate crystals — or solidified tartaric acid. I’m sure