Page 10 - Grapevine May-June 2019

In The Winery

Aroma Trials

By: Thomas J. Payette, Winemaking Consultant

OK – your wine smells good but can fate to see if the wine aroma will indeed become

it have a better aroma? Always
improved.
keep this in mind as a winemaker
or winery owner. The largest violation of “house When? The author recommends each wine be
palate”, a process where winemakers overlook reviewed:
their wine flaws because they taste their own
wines too often, is the oversight that their wines 1. Anytime one suspects a wine to be reduced or
may be reduced. Reduced or reductive is a broad smells hydrogen sulfide in the fermenter.
term that covers many sulfide compounds ranging
from hydrogen sulfide, rotten egg, to other more 2. Review all wines just after the fermentation
complex aromatics that may smell like cabbage, dill process as a blanket rule process to discover any
weed, onions or even garlic. wines that may improve from the copper sulfate
addition.
Early detection of these flaws is imperative to
clean up the wines and to make sure these com- 3. Three months prior to bottling and preferably
pounds do not evolve toward other more difficult before any stability processing actions have
to remove compounds, mercaptans, often needing been taken.
ascorbic acid additions to make the wine reactive
to the most commonly used remedy copper sulfate. 4. Roughly three days before bottling.

Copper sulfate trials are extremely easy and Why? As suggested, in the first sentence of this
there is no excuse for each wine created not to go article, winemakers should review each wine’s
through at least three quick trials with copper sul- aroma to see if faults exist. Some of the faults do

Page 8 The Grapevine • May - June 2019 877-892-5332

Grapevine Main Pages GV050619_Layout 1-1 .indd 8 4/16/19 12:57 PM