Date: Apr-May 2005
Flat & Sweet: Wine Wizard
MEMBERS ONLY, QMy pear wine is watery and flat, I have already bottled it. Is there anyway to save it? It was my first attempt at winemaking and I don’t know what went wrong. The only thing I can tell you is that I made it from fresh fruit and followed all directions in my recipe.
Do you know anyone who has used non-fermentable sweeteners like stevia for adjusting a wine post-fermentation?
MEMBERS ONLYDear Wine Wizard, Our local winemaker (at Galena Cellars) can detect potassium sorbate in wine, after it is used to prevent refermentation in sweetened-back wines. I’d like to substitute a non-fermentable sweetener for sucrose and am considering using stevia, a widely used sweetener in Japan. Although it is expensive, one needs only about 1/10 the
Is there any way to save a flat and watery wine I made?
MEMBERS ONLYThough making fruit-based wine is a little different from making grape-based wine, you always want to make sure you’ve got enough sugar, acid, tannin and aromatic and flavor compounds to result in a stable (over 10% alcohol), zippy (over 6.0 g/L total acidity) and flavorful beverage. The “numbers” are relatively easy to shoot for and
Grape/Non-Grape Blending
MEMBERS ONLYThe first time I ever blended two wines was an exercise in ignorance. I had a dewberry wine that had beautiful color and clarity but tasted flat. I also had a blackberry wine that was deeply pigmented and very clear, but tasted quite sharp to me. (Today I would describe it differently — excessively malic