John Treder wrote:Sulfur fumes? Aw, c'mon! Many wines are treated with "sulfite" which is a salt of something (likely sodium). It dissolves in water and the sulfite part of the stuff tends to pick up an extra oxygen (or something else) atom and keep the wine from getting other nasty oxidative things happening to it. I have no idea how the sulfite (SO2 component) acts with organic compounds, but that's because I'm not a chemist!
Mark Lipton will probably tell me (and you all) just how wrong I am.![]()
Anyway, "sulfur fumes" in the sense of something in a wine bottle (not a volcano) is total BS!
John
Clint Hall wrote:author Marco Pasanella writes that cork "keeps oxygen from coming in while letting the sulfur fumes out."
Mark Lipton wrote:Nope, you've got the essentials right, John. SO2 is introduced as potassium (not sodium) metabisulfite. It forms sulfites with the polyphenolics in the wine (and is then called "bound" SO2) but the whole schtick about sulfur fumes sounds like so much marketing BS to me.
Mark Lipton
TomHill wrote:Mark Lipton wrote:Nope, you've got the essentials right, John. SO2 is introduced as potassium (not sodium) metabisulfite. It forms sulfites with the polyphenolics in the wine (and is then called "bound" SO2) but the whole schtick about sulfur fumes sounds like so much marketing BS to me.
Mark Lipton
Au contraire, Mark.....it just sounds like absolute and total ignorance by a know-nothing wine writer...and there's a bunch of those out there.
Tom
Victorwine wrote:Hi Mark,
I’m not familiar with the publication or its “targeted” audience. Couldn’t the term “sulfur fume” just be another way of describing “free” SO2 (or distinguishing between “free” SO2 and “bound” SO2)? The “free” SO2 will have an odor, the “bound” SO2 could possible be odorless.
Howie Hart wrote:Well, this may have something to do with it if corks breathe. From personal experience, when I fill a wine barrel and have the wine dosed with, say, 30 ppm SO2, after 6 weeks or so, the level in the barrel will drop an inch or so and the SO2 level will have dropped to around 10 ppm, so every time I top up the barrel, I have to add potassium metabisulfite. I'm not sure if the SO2 is passing through the wood or if it is all getting bound.
Tomorrow morning I will be testing my Riesling for SO2 content before bottling, and making adjustments, as necessary. I have never tested SO2 on a wine that has been in the bottle for an extended period of time, but from what I've read, the level decreases over time.
Mark Lipton wrote:The barrels do breathe and let oxygen in, albeit at a slow rate.
Brian Gilp wrote:Mark Lipton wrote:The barrels do breathe and let oxygen in, albeit at a slow rate.
Has this been proven to be true? I know it is generally believed to be true but I do recall reading once a text on wine making where the author disputed this claiming that all the oxygen pick up came during the topping up process and not through the barrel staves.
Mark Lipton wrote:Brian Gilp wrote:Mark Lipton wrote:The barrels do breathe and let oxygen in, albeit at a slow rate.
Has this been proven to be true? I know it is generally believed to be true but I do recall reading once a text on wine making where the author disputed this claiming that all the oxygen pick up came during the topping up process and not through the barrel staves.
I don't see how one can explain the need to top up barrels (to account for loss due to evaporation) if one doesn't have some limited exchange with the atmosphere through the barrel.
Mark Lipton
Clint Hall wrote:Now here's another head scratcher, from the same book. Pasanella claims "champagne should be stored upright [sic] as moist contact with the wine can damage a cork's elasticity, thereby letting in damaging oxygen." Now I'd just snicker and forget about it but he claims that this is confirmed by "both the Oxford Companion to Wine and the Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC)." I checked the OCW and couldn't find anything about standing Champagne upright in the section on Champagne and in the section on cork. Has anybody in the world, other than Pasanella, ever made such an unusual claim? Why in hell should contact with wine damage a Champagne cork's elasticity any more than other wine bottle corks?
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