Wine additives

Wine additives

My goals in winemaking: to protect the grapes from oxidation and to preserve their aromas

My main choice for protecting my wines from oxidation is night harvest: picking during the freshest hours and immediately pressing the grapes is essential to preserve their amazing aromatic complexity and personality.

Nonetheless, during the hottest vintages a very limited use of Vitamin C on some white grapes may be needed: in this case, I may use it at the very moment of picking, to prevent the juice from becoming brown. I may also allow very low concentrations of sulfites only after the spontaneous fermentations - both alcoholic and malolactic - are finished. In most cases sulfites are added only before the bottling, or not added at all. Total amount of sulphur dioxide on my wines may sum up to a maximum of 30-60 mg/l depending on the vintage, and is by far below the legal limit - that is 350 mg/l in the US, and 210 mg/l in Europe. 

After a few years of experiments, I found that fining is not a good idea for my wines: I prefer natural stabilization through prolonged lees contact, which is enhanced by manual batonnages both in the tanks and in the barrels.

Some of my white wines are gently filtered using cellulose layers, that are afterwards composted. Red and orange wines are not filtered.