I've got a 5 gallon batch of dry black currant wine ready to bottle shortly. It is very dry and clear. I added sorbate a few days ago but I was wondering at what temp and how long I should cold stabalize.
Secondly I would like to bottle half dry and sweeten the other half with conditioner. Could I bottle the first half then add sweetener stir and bottle the other half. My concern is when I bottle the sweetened wine I will have stirred the sediment from cold stabalizing. I am going to filter as well so it may not be a problem.

Thanks

Camelot,
You have a couple different choices- rack the whole batch over into a
clean carboy and bottle the dry half and then sweeten the second half. Or
you could bottle directly out of the current carboy for the dry half, and
for the second half add the sugar directly to each bottle. I do this by
using a plastic syringe and add for instance 50ml of syrup per bottle. Just
do some trials just like you would have to anyways if doing the whole batch.
An advantage of this method is that you can have various sweetness levels in
the same wine with limited added work.
Some will tell you that anything you add to the wine should be given a
chance to interact before bottling and I cant say this is wrong. However, I
have added the sugar syrup directly to each bottle for hundreds of bottles
and have had no problems as of yet. One drawback I saw one year was
something in the sugar that left particles in a couple of bottles, but not a
major issue usually as most anything settles out in your syrup before it
ever makes it into your bottles.
Also, did you make sure the wine was properly sulphited prior to the
addition of the Sorbate? If not, take care of this now before you have a new
problem. HTH
John Dixon
"camelot" > wrote in message
news:1101561780.rnZw4w6HoDYbMrgzs2IIYw@teranews...
>
> I've got a 5 gallon batch of dry black currant wine ready to bottle
> shortly. It is very dry and clear. I added sorbate a few days ago but
> I was wondering at what temp and how long I should cold stabalize.
> Secondly I would like to bottle half dry and sweeten the other half
> with conditioner. Could I bottle the first half then add sweetener
> stir and bottle the other half. My concern is when I bottle the
> sweetened wine I will have stirred the sediment from cold stabalizing.
> I am going to filter as well so it may not be a problem.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> camelot

Camelot,
You have a couple different choices- rack the whole batch over into a
clean carboy and bottle the dry half and then sweeten the second half. Or
you could bottle directly out of the current carboy for the dry half, and
for the second half add the sugar directly to each bottle. I do this by
using a plastic syringe and add for instance 50ml of syrup per bottle. Just
do some trials just like you would have to anyways if doing the whole batch.
An advantage of this method is that you can have various sweetness levels in
the same wine with limited added work.
Some will tell you that anything you add to the wine should be given a
chance to interact before bottling and I cant say this is wrong. However, I
have added the sugar syrup directly to each bottle for hundreds of bottles
and have had no problems as of yet. One drawback I saw one year was
something in the sugar that left particles in a couple of bottles, but not a
major issue usually as most anything settles out in your syrup before it
ever makes it into your bottles.
Also, did you make sure the wine was properly sulphited prior to the
addition of the Sorbate? If not, take care of this now before you have a new
problem. HTH
John Dixon
"camelot" > wrote in message
news:1101561780.rnZw4w6HoDYbMrgzs2IIYw@teranews...
>
> I've got a 5 gallon batch of dry black currant wine ready to bottle
> shortly. It is very dry and clear. I added sorbate a few days ago but
> I was wondering at what temp and how long I should cold stabalize.
> Secondly I would like to bottle half dry and sweeten the other half
> with conditioner. Could I bottle the first half then add sweetener
> stir and bottle the other half. My concern is when I bottle the
> sweetened wine I will have stirred the sediment from cold stabalizing.
> I am going to filter as well so it may not be a problem.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> camelot

Camelot,
You have a couple different choices- rack the whole batch over into a
clean carboy and bottle the dry half and then sweeten the second half. Or
you could bottle directly out of the current carboy for the dry half, and
for the second half add the sugar directly to each bottle. I do this by
using a plastic syringe and add for instance 50ml of syrup per bottle. Just
do some trials just like you would have to anyways if doing the whole batch.
An advantage of this method is that you can have various sweetness levels in
the same wine with limited added work.
Some will tell you that anything you add to the wine should be given a
chance to interact before bottling and I cant say this is wrong. However, I
have added the sugar syrup directly to each bottle for hundreds of bottles
and have had no problems as of yet. One drawback I saw one year was
something in the sugar that left particles in a couple of bottles, but not a
major issue usually as most anything settles out in your syrup before it
ever makes it into your bottles.
Also, did you make sure the wine was properly sulphited prior to the
addition of the Sorbate? If not, take care of this now before you have a new
problem. HTH
John Dixon
"camelot" > wrote in message
news:1101561780.rnZw4w6HoDYbMrgzs2IIYw@teranews...
>
> I've got a 5 gallon batch of dry black currant wine ready to bottle
> shortly. It is very dry and clear. I added sorbate a few days ago but
> I was wondering at what temp and how long I should cold stabalize.
> Secondly I would like to bottle half dry and sweeten the other half
> with conditioner. Could I bottle the first half then add sweetener
> stir and bottle the other half. My concern is when I bottle the
> sweetened wine I will have stirred the sediment from cold stabalizing.
> I am going to filter as well so it may not be a problem.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> camelot