In article
>,
Gammagal > wrote:

> I've been making fruit wines - without sulfites- for over 30 years.
> The darker fruit wines with natural antioxidants last for many years.
> Over seven years ago, I started making enough wine each year to put
> some aside for testing. There is a myth that fruit wines don't last
> as long. There is also a MYTH that wines can not be made without
> sulfites. NEITHER IS TRUE!

Wines below a pH of 3.0, may not need SO2 as a preservative for aging.
Otherwise, with SO2 a sweet wine can age for decades. Grape wine, and I
presume with other fruit, begin with the smell (aroma) and taste of the
grape. As the wine ages, the acids and alcohols form esters (bouquet).
As the bouquet develops, the aroma diminishes. Wines made with out SO2
tend to lack fruit, and will brown to some extent. I suppose a wine made
under argon, in steel or glass, and sterile filtered could be made, but
it would be a pain in the butt.

Early wine makers would burn elemental sulfur to make SO2 in an amphora
or barrel (SO2 is heavier than air and will rest on the bottom of the
container), and then fill the container with wine. The Greeks, and
probably the Romans, would then heat their amphora in a smoke house to
pasturise the wine before it was buried in the earth for aging.
--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw>