Lesson 7. Wine storage
Wine storage is a serious matter. Especially when it comes to live wine — without preservatives and foreign alcohol. This wine can be re-fermented at any time. Watch your wine at the very end of fermentation, when it has already cleared: microscopic bubbles of carbon dioxide slowly rise, forming a thin lace ring on the surface.
But the room became cold (autumn is outside) and the bubbles disappeared. End of fermentation? It turns out it's not necessary. You turned on the heating and the bubbles appeared again. The same can happen with wine that you have already bottled. In the best case, it will knock out the cork and the wine will spill out; in the worst case, it can break the bottle and cause damage to you and your winery.
You can secure the end of the fermentation process using preservatives or alcohol. This is what almost everyone does. This is reliable: yeast fungi and other microorganisms will die, and as we know, “the dead cannot buzz.” And the wine will become dead. Only there is no benefit from such wine - only a buzz.
But if we want to keep the wine alive, we have to work hard.
The first thing to do is not to speed up the completion of the fermentation process. By this time, it is desirable that there is no longer any sediment in the bottle. Let the wine sit for a week until there are no more bubbles. Naturally, do not remove the water seal. Watch the wine. It’s better to do this with a flashlight: you can see the bubbles and the transparency and color of the wine. At this time you can taste the wine. You can’t add water to it anymore - if it’s sour or fresh, so be it. But you can add sugar, if necessary.
If fermentation is already over, sugar will not interfere, and if it is not over, the fermentation process will continue and the wine will become better and stronger. You just need to add sugar, not by pouring it into the neck from above, but by first dissolving it in the wine. That is, pour three liters of wine from a bottle into a saucepan, dissolve the desired amount of sugar in it, and pour it back into the bottle. What doesn't go in, you can drink. The amount of added sugar in this case, as a rule, does not exceed 0.5 kg per 10 liters of wine.
By the way, I know from experience that sweet wines are more resistant to re-fermentation than non-sweet wines. I attribute this to the fact that in sweet wines the fermentation process, as a rule, stops when the wine reaches the maximum percentage of alcohol - 12-13% vol., and in non-sweet wines the process can end due to a lack of sugar (from hunger) and when lower alcohol content.
The second thingthat it is advisable to do after the visual completion of fermentation is to take the wine to a cold place (cellar, basement) with a temperature of approximately 10-120C – for a month, or better yet for two – the longer the better. The wine ripening process will take place there. All this time the wine must be kept under a water seal. But that doesn't mean it's under lock and key. After a month you can already drink it, if you can’t stand it...
It is advisable to store wine this way, periodically visiting it with an empty decanter. But don't forget about the water seal.
In principle, a month after ripening in the cellar, wine can already be bottled. Preferably in glass, but it depends on the capabilities. Bottles must be filled to the top. Store at the same temperature, 10-120С.
When storing wine bottles, they are placed horizontally to avoid the corks from drying out and possible depressurization.
Your questions and comments: