Malolactic Fermentation Timing

I’m a little old school when it comes to malolactic fermentation, but it’s always served me well. There are some winemakers who try to get a jump on malolactic (ML) completion and co-inoculate with ML bacteria and wine yeast at the same time, but in my mind this is a little risky. You see, yeast and bacteria actually “talk” to each other during fermentation and sometimes they don’t like what they hear. In fact, Dr. Linda Bisson’s lab at UC-Davis just published a really interesting study showing how wine bacteria “query” the environment to check for competitors and adjust their metabolic process accordingly. Too many mixed messages in some cases can cause problems with fermentation completion, higher volatile acids, and other non-optimal outcomes. The take-away for me is that I like to let the yeast do their job eating sugar first (and making carbon dioxide and alcohol) undisturbed by too many outside competitors. Once they die off after primary fermentation (and the fermentation is hopefully dry), I press off my new wine and immediately add my ML bacteria and any