"Negodki" > wrote in message
...
> "pianogal" > wrote:
> > It will help the wine clear, but it also takes some of the taste and
color
> > with it.
>
> And thus my question.

My experience with bentonite in red wine is that even in small doses (~1-2
lb/1000 gal) it can dramatically improve the nose and bring the fruit to the
fore on the palate.

> > I prefer not to use bentonite to clear any of my wine, as I find that it
> > produces a large amount of lees that are "fluffy" and hard to rack off
> > without disturbing the it. I much prefer bulk aging the wine in the
> carboy
> > for 3 months or longer. This bulk aging also improves the quality of
the
> > wine itself. It's a win-win situation, as long as you have the
patience.

I can recover almost all the wine from bentonite lees by centrifugation in 2
liter plastic bottles in a washing machine on the spin cycle. Try it! It
works better on my specially modified machine, but it works OK on a normal
machine. Give it several cycles on "spin".

BTW, bulk aging is also a good thing. It's not the _only_ thing though.

> I wouldn't dream of using fining agents, unless the wine failed to cleared
> by itself within a year's aging.

If you think that fining agents are all about removing suspended solids, you
don't understand fining.

Fining is best done on a wine that is nearly or already clear. The idea is
to improve the _flavor_ - not to achieve clarity, although improved clarity
will frequently be a side benefit.

The use of the right amounts of certain fining agents can turn a mediocre
wine into a good wine, or a good wine into a _great_ wine!

It's necessary to conduct fining trials on any specific wine to determine
its best fining regimen, but that isn't really as hard to do as it sounds.

In fact, I used bentonite for the first
> time this year (on a stubborn apple wine). Results were impressive; loss
of
> flavour and/or colour was undetectable. The "common wisdom" is that
> bentonite should not be used on reds because of the colour loss.

My experience tells me that conventional wisdom is false in this regard.
You'd have to use a LOT of bentonite to strip color from a red wine - too
much to be considered normal or reasonable.

Also, a _light_ bentonite fining is recommended for any wine (including
reds) that you plan to filter. Makes things go easier and helps prevent the
pads/media from clogging up.

Tom S