Will country (fruit) wines age OK?

[keepitlow]

No sulfites, how long will country wine last in the bottle?

I bought some 1 - 2 year old homemade country blackberry wine in gallons from a guy in OH. Had some blackberry color but looks like brownish sherry once it gets opened and air hits wine in the bottle. Still tastes ok, but more like sherry than blackberry.

 

[Chevette Girl]

They do age OK but I'm told they do have a finite lifespan especially if you don't stabilize them.

The sherry-like flavour is oxidation and could be from the vintner allowing the wine access to oxygen in secondary fermentation, or it could be oxygen getting through the cork. I've had this happen with at least one bottle I've opened and although to me it was a pleasant change and really mellowed the wine, I may look into getting some better corks for some of my more involved batches, or maybe waxing them since I've got plenty of beeswax kicking around...

I have many fruit wines, mostly not stabilized, that are getting pretty aged, to the 4-6 year mark, now and then I crack one open, some of them still have the same problems they were bottled with but now and then I run into a surprise, like my mulled cranberry. Unfortunately I make a lot of small batches and I give a lot of wine away so I don't have as much of a selection of the really good stuff because I drank it all One of my ideas for when I rearrange my basement wine space is to take it all out of the shelves, catalog everything and arrange it chronologically when I put it back... I also tend to bulk-age things for a long time too because I'm too lazy to bottle it and I don't think anything has suffered for it

I'll crack open my last bottle of first-batch kiwi (started 2004) this week and let you know how it's aged.

 

[AToE]

Well, seeing as "country wine" covers pretty much every fruit on the planet other than grapes, I think you can guess that the answer will vary as much as the fruit can.

Higher ABV = longer aging. Higher tannin = longer aging. Sulphites = longer aging. There are probably a million other factors I'm missing here too.

It's the same as asking how long grape wine can age for. Some will peak within a year or two, some might take a decade.

 

[Medsen Fey]

Lots of acidity also favors longer aging, and proper storage will allow non-sulfited fruit wines to last longer. Some fruit batches I've made have declined in under 1 year and started turning to sherry. With my poor storage conditions I have learned to use sulfiting regularly.

One techniques that can help a wine without added sulfites last longer is using a yeast like EC-1118 that produces a lot of SO2 naturally.

 

[keepitlow]

How poor are your storage conditions Medsen?

 

[Medsen Fey]

Living in Florida, there's no cellar, so my stuff ages at room temp (75 F) except for a few bottles I can keep in the spare fridge.

 

[Angelic Alchemist]

One techniques that can help a wine without added sulfites last longer is using a yeast like EC-1118 that produces a lot of SO2 naturally.

Okay, that is a cool trick. Any other yeasts that are better for aging without sulfites?

 

[Medsen Fey]

At least one article I've seen:
Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 54:4 (2003)
Suggests that K1V may also produce quite a bit of bound SO2. I think Bayanus strains may also tend to produce more, but don't quote me on that. Other yeast species like S. Oviformis can produce a lot, but that's not really a practical thing.

Impact of Different Strains of

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Saccharomyces cerevisiae on Malolactic Fermentation by Oenococcus oeni​

Jesper T. Larsen,​

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1 Jan-Clair Nielsen,2 Birgitte Kramp,2 Marianne Richelieu,2 Pia Bjerring,2 Mette J. Riisager,2 Nils Arneborg,1 and Charles G. Edwards3*​

The ability of different strains of wine yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to inhibit malolactic bacteria (Oenococcus oeni) was studied using Chardonnay musts. Initial experiments indicated that the bacterial inhibition in a wine fermented by yeast V-1116 could be removed by addition of acetaldehyde or H2O2, compounds that can potentially neutralize the antibacterial properties of any SO2 produced by yeast. Malolactic fermentation was induced in fermenting grape musts or wines inoculated with different commercial strains of S. cerevisiae. Although the yeasts released <15 to 75 mg/L total SO2 during fermentation, little if any free SO2 (<3 mg/L) was produced. As O. oeni was generally inhibited in wines that contained higher amounts of total SO2, the lack of free SO2 suggests that bound SO2 may be more inhibitory than previously thought. Furthermore, bacterial inhibition was strongest in wines where the majority of SO2 was not bound to acetaldehyde but bound to other unidentified molecules. However, SO2 production by yeast did not always account for the inhibition of O. oeni, and the presence of other inhibitory mechanisms is probable.​

 

[storm1969]

It depends....

My blueberry and elderberry wines age quite well....

But they have a decent amount of tannin and acidity.

My Strawberry, not so much.....