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What Went Wrong – Top 10 Wine Making Mistakes #6

March 24th, 2009 by robin in wine making, wine making tips

We are half way through our list of the top 10 wine making mistakes. We have discussed inadequate equipment, cleaning & sanitizing, failure to follow instructions, bad water, and poor yeast handling. Number six is one of great significance – poor temperature control.

Kit instructions tell you to ferment your wine within the recommended temperature range of 65°F to 75°F. When striving to be in this range, we recommend the closer to the top end, the better. Yeast thrives between these temperatures. This is one of the situations where wine making kit instructions are different than commercial wine making techniques. In commercial wineries, some white wines are fermented cooler than this, sometimes below 55°F. Commercial wineries have the luxury of taking a year (or two, or three) before they bottle their wines, so they don’t have a problem. For the home wine maker though, if the fermentation area is too cool the wine will ferment very slowly. As mentioned in our discussion of mishandling of yeast, a cold must doesn’t allow the lipid tissue of the yeast cell to soften enough to grow. A cold start may be very difficult to overcome and in some cases may never even finish. In addition, slow fermentation will lead to an excess of CO2 gas (fizz) in the wine, and it may not be ready to stabilize and fine on the appropriate day. Finally, the kind of fining agents included with wine making kits don’t work well at temperatures outside of the 65°F to 75°F range. Below 64°F your wine kit may not clear at all!

Since we ended discussing stabilizing our wine, the next wine making mistake in our discussion will be adding sulfite and sorbate at the wrong time.