How long to age wine kits

White wines seem happier to give up their trapped CO 2 , sometimes quite explosively! Some white wines with oak will taste better if you wait another months for the oak to integrate.

Red wines, on the other hand, need extra aging time. I find that most reds will need a minimum of 2 to 3 years to really open up, though they are often quite drinkable before that. Red wines have large compounds that need to rearrange chemically to please our palates, which takes time to occur and cannot be rushed. If you can hold on to a wine that long, you will experience a completely different wine from the early years, and you will regret drinking all but those last 2 or 3 bottles that are now perfect.

For the less patient, there are a few value-priced, less complex red wine kits that are very drinkable within 6 months to a year. These include lighter-bodied, fruit-forward wines like Bergamais and Sangiovese; but even these will greatly improve if given more time. So be sure to create a diverse cellar with various wines. Aging temperature is also important.

If you give your wine the right amount of time, what you think might be an ugly duckling may end up a beautiful swan! People too often seem to be in a hurry to have wine to drink. Make a wine white that ages and tastes good, quickly. Also make a kit red that will age fairly quickly, 6—9 months, then make a high-end kit that requires at least months aging. We will always add extra sulfite to the long-aging kit.

Certain wines can improve with extended storage time, but there are a lot of incomplete ideas and misconceptions about wine aging. What really happens to the wine in the carboy, barrel and bottle, and the role of sulphite and storage conditions is often misunderstood. The truth is, kit wine will age similarly and as well as most wines made from grapes. The most important factor, other than the integrity of the wine in the bottle, is how the bottle is stored. However, inappropriate temperature, vibration, low humidity and change or variance in these conditions will affect your wine negatively.

Some kits already contain adequate sulphite powder in their additive packs to ensure this level, while others have a more conservative amount. The question immediately comes up: if 35—50 PPM is the right level, why not just include that in the package? One thing that comes up fairly often is the idea that aging in bulk in the carboy will produce better wine. There is no magic chemical process that is aided by storing it in a larger volume. However, there are two small things that can be cast as votes in favor of bulk-aging.

This can be a challenge to wine connoisseurs as well as home winemakers. Below this range, wine will age very slowly, and above it, wine will age more rapidly.

Fluctuations in climate are much more damaging than high temperatures. When wine heats and cools, it expands and contracts inside the bottle. You truly get what you pay for when it comes to wine kits. Many kit winemakers choose to purchase small quantities of oak to fine-tune and personalize their creation, which we highly recommend. We offer oak chips, cubes, and shavings in small quantities perfect for a kit. These take longer than the powder, typically between 3 weeks and 2 months, depending on the size of the oak particles Larger chunks of oak require more exposure time due to less surface area contacting the wine, but may impart better flavor characteristics.

Super Smoother is a 2-part kit containing 1-part Glycerin for improving mouthfeel and smoothing harsh young wines, and 1-part Sinatin 17 which is a liquid oak extract for flavor. Super Smoother comes in a handy 1 oz packet that will treat 6 gallons of wine. With any oak, it is always best to test and evaluate the flavor at multiple stages of oaking so you can fine-tune the desired level of oakiness in your wine.

Beginners tend to over-oak their wine — remember that one can always add more oak, but never take it away. Back-sweetening and back-blending is often necessary in kit wines that ferment out extremely dry. Many kits intending to produce a sweeter wine will include a packet of unfermented grape juice, which is added after fermentation has ended and the wine has been stabilized back-blending.

This method is superior to adding peripheral sweeteners back-sweetening , as blending the same exact grape juice will integrate much more smoothly into the flavor of the wine.

Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Metabisulphite are used to ensure fermentation does not renew after the addition of juice or sugar, as without these preservatives the remaining yeast would simply convert that added sugar to more alcohol. Take a small sample of wine from your carboy and mix a proportional amount of juice or sweetener and evaluate its impact on flavor.

Here you can make your own interpretation of how much juice is needed to achieve a desired result. Also similar to oaking, one can always add more juice or sweetener to a wine, but it's difficult to reverse the effect.