Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Care And Feeding of a Baby Wine: One More Note on Yeast

Many people comment to me about the fact that yeast is already present on the grapes, so why not let the fermentation go naturally?  This fact is indeed correct.  However, there are problems with relying on wild yeast.  For one thing, there are many types of yeast that give some nasty characteristics to a wine.  So you have no way of knowing whether you have a “good” yeast or a “bad” yeast.  One year your wine will turn out wonderful and the next it can be just plain awful.  The most common problem with wild yeast is the fact that the fermentation often stops prematurely and, as mentioned before, a stopped fermentation is very difficult to get going again.  So, it is my opinion that trying to use the wild yeast present on the grapes is like playing “Russian Roulette”.  With so many wonderful yeast products to choose from, why take the chance?

No comments:

Post a Comment