Why Rack Your Wine During The Aging Process?

My goals this weekend were two-fold:

1) Celebrate “Earth Hour” on Saturday – which my wife and I did indeed do (hope you did too)

2) Get caught up on all of those wine making activities that I haven’t had time for over the last several weeks (and I know I’m not the only one in this boat …)

This mainly included:

- Cleaning out our pantry in the basement under the stairs so that we had a nice, dark and cool space to age our wine (we like to “bulk age” our wine in the carboy so that the batch has a consistent flavour)

- Racking our current batches of wine that are in the aging process so that I could get them into our new found “aging room”

I am pleased to say that for the most part I was successful in achieving my goals this weekend, but the experience was even more satisfying then expected as it reminded me of several important things about wine making that I wanted to share with you all.

Why Do We Rack Our Wine During The Aging Process?

Well, the most obvious reason is to get rid of the sediment at the bottom of the carboy as it helps clear the wine ensuring that there is less sediment in the bottle. Now of course if you are a proponent of filtering your wine this is less of an issue for you, but I’m of the mind that if you age and rack your wine properly you really don’t need to filter your wine. This is a personal opinion of course ….

The other (and often forgotten reason) is that racking your wine allows for a little bit of oxygen to be added to your wine, which in fact allows your wine to “breath” – much like when you decant your wine before enjoying it. This should help your wine develop it’s bouquet and flavours as it ages.

Do I Need To Add Anything To Wine If I Plan On Aging It For More Then Six Months?

The simple answer is yes. If you would like to age your wine past 6 months you need to add a preservative to stave off oxidization, which will potentially ruin your wine. To do this simply add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulphate to 1/2 cup of cool water then gently stir this solution into your carboy (this assumes you have 23 litres of wine).

I’ve Racked My Wine And Have An Airspace Left In The Carboy – Now What?

One of the reasons why we use carboys as the secondary and for aging is that it has narrow neck. This is to help reduce the airspace in the container to limit potential contact with oxygen thereby reducing the chance that your wine will spoil.

You’ll notice, however, that when you rack (transfer your wine from one container to the next leaving the sediment behind) that you’ll have less wine in the new carboy then what you originally had. This is simply because the sediment at the bottom of the carboy takes up some of the volume in the carboy, not to mention the fact that you’ll be leaving some of the wine behind from the bottom instead of risking having some of the sediment transfer over to the new carboy in the wine at the bottom.

You will want to top up your wine in the new carboy to within 5 cm of the bottom of the bung, so the question therefore becomes what do you use?

Here’s what I usually use (and I would be curious to hear what you use):

1) Sterile water – in my opinion though this waters down the wine depending on how much you have to add so I have been moving away from using it.

2) Similar wine to the one your making (either commercial or homemade) – it adds a unique, balanced flavour to the wine. This is what I did today with one of our wines we’re making from an expensive wine kit. It is the Stag’s Leap Merlot so I decided to added two bottles of Casa Lapostelle (a medium priced 2006 Chilean Merlot we quite like) with the hope that it will add a complex flavour to the wine. This was a little more expensive then we expected though as the wine we added cost $16 a bottle. So we’re now in for just under $200 for this wine kit so I hope it will turn out well – we justified the extra expense though as we’re still just over $6 a bottle for wine we expect will rival a $30 – $50 bottle of wine.

I’ve also heard of people making a cheaper matching wine kit to the one they’re making to specifically use as a “topper upper”. Interesting idea!

For our chocolate raspberry port I have purchased a cheap blended port to top things up once I rack it.

3) White or red grape concentrate (usually done with fruit wines) – This are usually included in the fruit wine recipes anyways to add a bit of fruitiness and depth so generally not a bad idea although I’ve heard some fruit wine advocates ask why you’d want a fruit wine to taste like a grape wine? Personal preference I guess.

4) Something else – This is where you can experiment a bit. For our crabapple wine, for example, I added two 500 ml cans of Strongbow dry cider and was also considering adding some unsweetened apple juice.

Which ones are right and which ones are wrong? I guess it really comes down to personal taste and you really won’t know how things turn out till you bottle your wine and try it for the first time.

Sometimes you wine and sometimes you lose but at least you can be comforted knowing that chances are you’ll still be able to use your wine in some fashion regardless. This could be as part of your cooking, as a wine spritzer in the summer (i.e. add Sprite or 7-Up to it) or you can even gussy it up with some drink crystals.

Remember to record what you’ve added and how much so that you can replicate your wine again if it turns out really well!

Anyhoo, just some ideas to throw your way this evening.

I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are on racking (i.e. how often during aging), wine filtering and what you use to up your wine during the aging process.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

- Scott