The pinot grigio at the lane started naturally fermenting just over a week ago. It was still in tank, so it was decided to leave the entire crush in tank for ferment. Today the Beaume has gone from 14.2 to 0.2 = roughly 4g/L sugar. Total Acid = 7.01 and pH = 3.59.Pinot Grigio naturally has high tannins / phenolics in its skins. The wine is tasting great with lots of punchy fruit aromas and some estery banana character however it is also still on gross lees (full yeast) so there is plenty more fruit that is yet to shine through.
Talking with the Lane's wine maker (charlotte) it was decided that to get the pinot grigio closer to where I want it to be structurally for Auge's food, an acid add is required. The photo above shows Charlotte, Jen and I bench tasting 5 replications of the same wine but with different amounts of tartaric acid added to each. This was only a pre-liminary trial however, some good results shone through. Between each trial we increased the acid added by 250mg/L, therefore trial 1 contained no added acid, 2 250mg/L, trial 3 500mg/L etc. through to trial 5 which contained 1g/l acid. A marked difference in palate structure began at 500mg/L. The best result was seen to be at 750mg/L. However, most interestingly, when 1g/L was added the acid appeared to fall away back to where it was in trial 1. I postulate that this is due to a decrease in pH that was buffered and therefore not recogniseable in the other trials.
Our conclusion was that once the wine is fermented to dry = all sugar is converted to alcohol we will run an acid trial again, this time with a tighter margin above and below 750mg/L. Once we are satisfied that we have made the best decision for the wine, we will acidify the partially fined wine before it gos to barrel.
