Page 11 - Grapevine July-August 2019

In The Winery

action. These trials can be tasted and tested to see • Small glass beakers 250 milliliters plus or minus
what the results would, or will have been, if the Representative sample(s) of each wine to be
addition was made to the actual tank or vessel of sampled.
juice/wine. This eliminates guesswork and unnec- • Clean wineglasses.
essarily “shooting from the hip” in the cellar. • Glass watch glasses to cover each glass.
• Spit cup.
Where? • Other testing equipment to answer questions at
hand.
One should do these trails in the laboratory where • Magnetic Stir plate with stir bars and retriever
control, on a small-scale amount of wine, is essen- for the stir bars.
tial. The opportunities of what one can discover • Sharpie™ pen or pencil for marking beakers.
in the lab are almost endless. I repeat let’s always • 95% ethanol to remove Sharpie™ pen marks off
make our mistakes on a small scale in the labora- glassware.
tory before stepping into the cellar for any actions
that may change the flavor, aroma or chemistry of How?
any juice/wine. This lab area should be designed
for this feature of experimentation. The metric sys- Start with something simple where results can be
tem will be used. Once this is attempted, one will easily determined with the wineglass to give the
not step back into some of the complicated aspects confidence needed to build upon the procedure.
or other forms of measurement. These trials can An example of this may be a tartaric addition trial
be used for many things including but not limited for pH correction and/or palate modification. Let’s
to: sugar additions, acid additions, fining agents, go over one example.
concentrates, de-acidification’s etc.
1. Start with an ample quantity of wine to work
with in the lab – perhaps an 800-milliliter repre-
sentative sample from a wine vessel.
2. Weigh accurately 1.0 gram of tartaric acid and
fully dissolve the acid in approximately 85 milli-
liters of the base wine with which you are work-
ing.
Small Trials Before 3. Once dissolved, place the full amount into a 100

milliliter graduated cylinder or as one becomes
more experienced you may just make the solu-
Making Big Decisions 4. Bring the amount up to volume in the 100 mil-
tion in the 100 milliliter graduated cylinder.
liliter graduated cylinder up to 100 milliliters
By: Thomas J. Payette, Winemaking Consultant mark with additional base wine. [One should be
Potential Tools Needed clear they have made a solution of 1.0-gram tar-
taric acid dissolved into 100 milliliters of wine.]
• Accurate scales that measure in grams prefera- 5. In a clean graduated cylinder, pipette 10 milli-
bly to a tenth of a gram. liters of the newly prepared acid stock solution
• 3 - 100 milliliter graduated cylinder (plastic pre- into the cylinder. Bring to the complete 100
ferred). milliliters volume mark with the base wine. This
• 1 – 50 milliliter graduated cylinder (plastic pre- should represent a 1.0 gram per liter tartaric
ferred). acid addition.
• 1 – 10 milliliter pipette (Class A volumetric). 6. Pipette twenty milliliters from the stock acid
• 2 – 10 milliliter pipettes with graduated mark- solution made in step four into another graduat-
ings at each milliliter to the tenth. (Plastic pre- ed cylinder and bring to volume at the 100 milli-
ferred) [ AKA : Serological ™ ]. liter mark to represent the next addition level of

877-892-5332 The Grapevine • July - August 2019 Page 9

Grapevine Main Pages GV070819_Layout 1-1 .indd 9 6/18/19 3:20 PM