"Bonaquisti" > wrote in message
...
> Hi all,
>
> I made some wine from grapes last year (Zin) and fresh juice (San
Giovese). We
> tested them and both were low in acidity, so we added tartaric as per
> instructions. The wine is clearing nicely, and at every racking, we
tasted
> some, it always tasted very good for such a young wine. I racked again
> recently, and the wine now tastes very acidic to me, all of the carboys
do!
>
> My question: Is this a natural chain of events as the wine ages, and will
it
> eventually mellow? or is this how it is going to stay? If so, is there
> anything that can be done to "soften" the acidity? Cold stabilization?

Cold stabilization _might_ help, but I'll bet you over-adjusted the wine.
You can reduce the acidity by adding potassium carbonate, but be careful you
don't overshoot _again_! Try a measured adjustment on a small portion of
the wine. Chill the wine deeply for a week or two to drop out the excess
potassium bitartrate and taste it. If it seems about right, adjust all the
wine proportionately and cold stabilize it before bottling. If the
adjustment was a little too much or too little, you should have an idea of
what would be right, so you can try that on a second sample.

The right way to do acid additions is to measure the pH of the must/juice
and add tartaric to bring it to a reasonable starting pH. Bear in mind that
after ML the pH will be higher than where you set it, so you may want to
compensate for that by targeting on the low side initially. For example, if
the starting pH is 3.7, bring it down to 3.4 or so. Then after ML it will
probably be about 3.5.

Tom S