Wine Focus: April - Everything’s Fine

[David M. Bueker]

Remember the good old days of Robert Parker railing about fining and filtering as if the fate of the universe depended on banishing the practices from wineries around the globe?

Does anyone even talk about fining and filtering anymore? I know that wineries, and not just industrial ones, still use the practices, but you never hear anything about them.

Have any opinions on the practices? Willing to divulge a wine you like that is fined or filtered, or God forbid…both?

Back in the early Parker period fining and filtering was an issue when selling wine to the casual consumer. Many of them confused tartrate crystals with contamination with sand or glass and thought that there was something wrong with a wine throwing a sediment. I've talked to many wine shop proprietors who experienced consumers returning wines because of these perceived "faults".

Fining and filtering have never really figured into my wine buying decisions. I'm a bottom-line guy--I look at the final product. I don't really care how the producer got there. That being said, I do observe that over half of the reds that I drink throw a considerable sediment.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

At least half the white wines (and even a few reds) I drink have “wine diamonds.”

I think it's safe to say that few, if any, of the wines I drink are filtered. When it comes to fining, there are degrees. I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the wines I drink may have undergone some amount of light fining, but I am not doctrinaire about those sorts of things, so whatevs.

[David M. Bueker]

Same here. Heck, I know German pradikat wines have to undergo some scandalous filtering, but they still taste great, so…

I will have to re-listen to a couple of podcasts, as I know on one of them David Ramey gave a detailed and rational explanation regarding fining. As with many things he says it made me go “huh, that makes a lot of sense.”

[Jenise]

I never sat at the feet of Parker so never had an opinion about it one way or the other--I like what I like and generally presume that the wines I gravitate toward are lower intervention than not. But I can't swear to any of it.

[David M. Bueker]

And isn’t that really the thing Jenise? Unless there’s an “unfined and unfiltered” or something similar on the label it’s not easy to know. The Newton Chardonnay had “unfiltered” on the label (still does) but fining? Who knows. Heck, who cares, unless there’s a vegan consideration, and egg whites may have been used.

And isn’t that really the thing Jenise? Unless there’s an “unfined and unfiltered” or something similar on the label it’s not easy to know. The Newton Chardonnay had “unfiltered” on the label (still does) but fining? Who knows. Heck, who cares, unless there’s a vegan consideration, and egg whites may have been used.

or isinglass...

[David M. Bueker]

At least icinglass sounds cool.

[Jenise]

I do have one objection against egg white fining: when it's done wrong and little white loogies are floating in the wine. (Yes, as actually found once in a bottle of red Atlas Peak.) Pretty disgusting: at the risk of being indelicate, egg white isn't neccessarily the first thing it reminds you of.

Back in the days of the Mad Cow Disease panic there was some controversy about some French wine estates that were still using the old practice of fining using cattle blood.

-Paul W.