Campden in Champagne?!

[jamesbsmith]

I made 4.5L of some really nice apple wine (500g rhubarb, 500ml white grape juice & 3Kg Cox Apples). As I used Cox, the wine is at SG 1.000 but has a really sweet taste. I therefore think that it would be really nice making it into a champagne, but once the fermentation had finished (about a month ago), I popped in a crushed campden tablet! I am therefore wondering if the there would still be any bisulphtes in the wine and if they would hinder bottle conditioning?! I don't want to end up with 4.5L of even sweeter wine! Will be delish if it does fizz!

Thanks guys!

Jim

 

[Yooper]

Campden (potassium metabisulfite) doesn't stop or inhibit fermentation. That's why winemakers use it routinely. It's an antioxidant and helps preserve wine. I keep 50 ppm in my wines, more or less, all the time.

In any case, what will stop fermentation will be the alcohol tolerance of the yeast. Since most wines will finish at something like .990, and yours stopped at 1.000, it's entirely possibly that you've simply reached the alcohol tolerance of the yeast strain you used. If that is the case, it will not carb up when you add additional fermentables.

What was the OG? If it was under 1.100, you should not have reached the alcohol toxicity point for any wine yeast strain so further fermentation should occur.