What does young wine taste like?

[TrubDude]

Hi,

I've been brewing beer for 1 year and wine for 6 months. I'm just curious how you would describe a young wine taste? Im bad and haven't aged mine for too long because I like the taste too much.

I would describe it as an alcohol juice, doesn't quite taste like wine. What are your tips for aging, so you don't touch it? And does aging always improve taste?

 

[Mallerstang]

To me, young wine tastes raw. Not quite sure how else to describe it, but you know it when you taste it - the alcohol is a bit too obvious, the acid is too sharp; it doesn't taste bad, just not quite right.

For aging, you need to start a lot the first few years! Like twice as much as you want to have available to drink and share over the next year. This is my third winemaking summer - we drank most of the first year's wine too soon, but quite a few from last year are stiil aging, so more of this year's should be able to age properly.

Also, if you have enough carboys you can make quicker things like skeeter pee or basic kit wines so you have something to drink while you wait, if you don't want to buy your booze any more. It got really expensive here in Canada.

 

[jonereb]

My "young wine" tastes like fermentation smells, if that makes sense. It has more of a bite than I like probably due to the alcohol and/or tartness. Aging definitely helps. I like to age two years or more. I have one bottle from 2015 that I haven't opened yet, on purpose. May wait another year and see how it mellows in the 4th year.

 

[hamiltonkiler]

"green" as I describe it.
My crates hold 16 bottles. My 5gal batch makes 20+ bottles. So 4-5 bottles to taste through the year in different stages and the 16 bottles In the crate goes under the craw space with a date tag on it.

 

[bernardsmith]

I think the thing is that the higher the ABV of the wine the longer it needs to age. There is a formula for this (more like a rule of thumb) but I don't recall what it is but a wine or mead that is about 5-6% ABV should not need to age. And certainly, if you like the taste of a wine then drink it. You MIGHT find that if you leave a bottle or two to age a year or more that the wine after that time seems to have moved into an entirely different world. They can be transformed through aging.

The other thing is that "aging" does not really improve wines that have fusels. You create fusels by forcing the yeast to ferment under heat and other stresses. Those higher alcohols are SAID to age out of a wine... but I don't know that they do. Fusels are what makes the alcohol taste "hot". Good wines improve with age because all the flavors better integrate and some of the acids drop out of solution and others convert to less harsh acids. Poor wines simply get old.

 

[WTD]

good thread. i had a bottle just the other night as a tester.
when i filled my 12L glass carboy with my blueberry wine i had enough left over for a 5L but only a bottle worth for drinking (maybe 1.5 litres) and i bottled this and drank right away with no campden tablets or stablising. no preservatives at all. after 1.5 bottles i woke with no head ache which i usually get from that much wine.

It tasted good, but also sharp with a high acid content but not too high, i did want a high acid content as its a strong dark red. ABV was about 14%. i figured some time aging for the other 12L would round this out after a few months. hope to age it for a year at least as im producing a fair amount and i dont drink wine that often so should be easy to age.

Not sure on those fussel oils. couldnt taste any but at 14% i know they are there. im a veteran spirit maker and i know that pushing a yeast at 14% there is a fair amount of heads and tails which aging may reduce the taste of but not the chemicals themselves. whisky relies on agels share to reduce this.


If wine settles enough in carboys, then demijons before bottleing, can they further settle in the bottle? i would assume so. I plan to drink all my reds with a decanter in case there is any settlement in a bottle of red.

 

[Hotel Guy]

Good thread, thanks for making. To add, I recently bottled a ~$50 Cabernet kit and it’s been a little over a month and I tried a bottle the other day and it was very harsh and not very good. Does aging for 6+ months have a drastic effect on the taste, or is it more of a general smoothing out of what is already there?