"treetoad" wrote in message
ups.com...
#1.....I am pretty new to this....my parents have been making wine for
years,and their wine always had a "taste" to it,regardless of the
variety of grape.I believe it may be from the sorbistat they have
always used to stop their wine. They always liked sweeter wines,but I
like dry wines,so my question is,if I let my wine go completely dry,say
to .995 SG, do I even need to sorbistat it to safely bottle it ?

No. In fact I highly recommend _against_ it. I don't like the flavor of
sorbate either.

What
if I get to a taste that I like that is higher in sugar...can it be
bottled without treating it with sorbistat? What about sodium
benzoate...does it have a "taste" to it,and how do you use it? My end
objective is to intervene as little as possible when it comes to
additives.Thanx.

You certainly should use sulfite in your wine, but that won't prevent
refermentation by itself.

I've never used benzoate, so I don't know if that's a good way to go.
Making sweet wines as an amateur pretty much forces you to one of three
choices:
1) Sorbate/sulfite combo,
2) Maintaining the wine refrigerated after clarification and bottling, and
3) Sterile membrane filtration.

Those are in _increasing_ order of desirability and difficulty. OTOH, if
you really get serious about winemaking I recommend that you pick door #3.
Sterile filtration isn't really all that difficult. It does require some
equipment and a bit of technique though, and the filter media is a bit
pricy - but you can run a _lot_ of wine through a filter cartridge before
you have to replace it if you adequately clarify the wine beforehand so as
to not load the membrane too quickly.

Perhaps I'll write a few chapters on the subject one day when I have time.

Tom S