The Wine Press and the Cellar: A Manual for the Wine-Maker and the Cellar-Man

by Emmet H. Rixford

The idea is in all cases to avoid mixing the lees with the wine, and if young wines are to be shipped before the arrival of the period of the first racking, they should nevertheless be carefully drawn off, if they have already become clear, for to mingle again the lees with wine, predisposes it to secondary fermentations, and renders it difficult to clarify.

Treatment of Old Red Wines.—Wines after the fourth racking are treated as old wines. When they have acquired a clean taste, are limpid and no longer ferment, the casks should be carefully filled and tightly bunged, and they should be stored in a suitable place, with the bung turned to one side. The bung being thus constantly wet swells and exactly fills the hole, the wine keeps better, there is less loss by evaporation, and constant filling up is avoided.

If it happens that by bad treatment the wines are not clear and behave badly, they should receive the necessary treatment, and be clarified before permanently put away with the bung at the side.

In cellars and other well closed places, old red wine, clean-tasting, bright and quiet, stored in good, well hooped casks, need only two rackings per year, one in March and the other in September, unless for some reason it loses its limpidity by entering again into fermentation, which will be discovered by tasting from time to time. In that case, it should immediately be drawn off without regard to the date of the former racking, and then fined.

Care should be taken not to leave ullage in the cask of old wine, by frequent samplings and tastings. And when it occurs, in order to avoid its effects, the wine may immediately be drawn into a smaller cask, and this is necessary more frequently in airy storehouses where the evaporation is greater than in cellars.

Boireau says that if these rules are carefully observed the wines will improve, and develop all the qualities which by their nature they are susceptible of acquiring. The greater or less degree of fineness which they acquire by aging under proper conditions results principally from two causes: The first is the deposit of coloring matter and divers salts which the new wine contains in dissolution, and which become insoluble by entering into new combinations, and which in their turn are removed at each racking, with the lees; the second cause is the transformation of the tannin, which gives the wine a certain degree of roughness, into gallic acid, and its extraction in the insoluble combinations which it forms with the different principles contained in the wine and with the finings which are introduced. It follows that old wine loses part of its color and soluble salts, and a great part of the tannin which it originally contained. Its taste is more delicate, its flavor, which was masked by these different matters, comes out better, its bouquet commences to develop, and its mellowness is more pronounced.

These remarks are more particularly applicable to grand wines, for in many of the ordinary ones the fruity flavor which they have when new is lost before the end of the first year, because the mucilages and pectine, which give them their mellowness, are either precipitated with the lees or are destroyed by insensible fermentation. In general these wines lack firmness, body and tannin, and many of them show a strong tendency to lose their color.

The time necessary for wines to remain in wood in order to acquire the highest degree of perfection which they can acquire in casks, depends upon the quality of the wine; wines of strength and body require more time than feeble ones.

Our author says that, on the average, the poorest wines of the Médoc become bright about the end of two years, and if they are kept longer, they lose their mellowness. But on the other hand, the firm and full-bodied wines of the same localities require to remain in wood a year longer to arrive at perfect maturity. Certain wines strongly charged with tannin, coming from certain localities, and those made from the verdot grape, are long in developing, but they keep so much the longer.

When they have attained their entire development and the separation of the lees is complete, they must be bottled, for they will lose their qualities if left in casks. In bottles they arrive at perfection; they acquire bouquet while they preserve their mellowness, but in casks, they finally lose their fruity flavor and velvety smoothness, and become dry.