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Some of our wine turned from still to sparkling…

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Sparkling to still? Some of our wine turned from still to sparkling. Can we change it back to still at this point? Will nitrogen sparging take care of it or do we need to add sorbate? Greg Hyman Conway, South Carolina Like I mentioned earlier, winemakers do have some control over how much fizziness we bottle our wine with. We can use a sparging stone in-line with a pump and hose (or in the bottom of a keg, if you have smaller amounts) to add carbon dioxide or, interestingly, we can sparge with nitrogen in the exact same way to remove dissolved carbon dioxide. Sparging for carbon dioxide removal only works, however, as long as your carbon dioxide is not being constantly replenished by microbial activity. If you have an active fermentation going on, either from unfinished sugars from the primary fermentation, from an incomplete malolactic fermentation or from a microbial infection of any kind, no amount of sparging with nitrogen will remove the CO2 if it keeps getting produced. Before you sparge to strip out the CO2, you should