Being relatively new to home winemaking, I have some questions about a
sparkling wine I'm going to be making. I've decided to use a RJ Spagnols
Cellar Classic Chardonnay as the base - half will be made as a still wine,
the other half sparkled by la methode champenoise. My thoughts so far a

The TA is about 6.2 - I'm thinking I should probably bump this up to about 8
or so. Does anyone know if I'll have any problems doing this? (Ie: are kits
heavily buffered, etc)

Oak - I wasn't going to oak the wine (except for the still Chard) as I had
read in winemaker magazine ( http://winemakermag.com ) that oak tastes awful
in sparkling wine. However, on tasting the wine (on about day 30 so far) it
seemed lacking in structure, and I opted to add the oak powder that came
with the kit along with the kit finings - I'll rack in about a week. Do
you think that the oak will be detrimental to the flavour or beneficial?
I'm thinking that by adding it in conjunction with the finings any negative
effects of tannins/colouring will be minimized.

Finally - the wine has alc by volume of about 12.5% - I want to drop this
by about 1% before sparkling it - but I do not want to dilute with water (I
would have to add 1L water to the 11.5L I plan to sparkle in order to make
11.5% by volume). I have access to Chardonnay grape juice (I'm near RJ
Spagnols in Delta, BC) and am wondering if I used that to dilute if I would
be OK?

My thoughts are that I can measure the specific gravity of the Chardonnay
grape juice and calculate the amount of sugar in it - and adjust as
necessary for secondary fermentation (either dilute the juice a bit with
water or add sugar to it as the case may be). And of course, by using grape
juice of the same variety, I maintain more varietal character and
flavour - however, I am wondering if it would cause problems with clarity?

Anyone's thoughts and feedback would be greatly appreciated, as I have found
it somewhat difficult to find good solid information on sparkling wine
online.

Incidentally, one link relating to sparkling wine that I have found, and
which is excellent is:
http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/viticultu...7/463-017.html

- Brandon