Healthy lees smell great, yeasty, bready, floral, or fruity I had lees once that smelled just like fresh mango. A trick with carboys: You can gently angle the carboy to one side and roll it circularly on its base to whisk lees into suspension, thereby avoiding opening the carboy to stir, introducing oxygen and dealing with sanitization, etc. Be extremely careful if doing this — carboys are delicate, their glass thick, and breaking one can lead to serious injury.
If a carboy falls or breaks, do not try to catch or save it. This is best done slowly and gently on a soft surface, like carpet or mat. As mentioned, some winemakers do like to age on the gross lees, and this can lead to interesting, reductive, funky aromas, but it also ups the risk of winding up with too much reduction or introducing spoilage bacteria that may be on grape bits and lees themselves. Thankfully, separating the gross from the fine lees is simple.
After fermentation has stopped and the lees have settled, stir everything vigorously to suspend them in the wine. Wait 24 hours for the heavier stuff gross lees to settle to the bottom of your vessel, then rack. The fine lees take days to settle, so the cloudy, leesy wine you rack will contain just the fine lees.
If you want to get rid of your fine lees too, either right after fermentation, or at any point during aging, simply let them settle for five or so days after fermentation has stopped or your last stirring and rack the clear wine off of them. If your wine is clear i. Lees do cool things when it comes to malolactic fermentation; they can provide nutrients for the malolactic bacteria to feed on, which is especially helpful if you choose not to use commercial nutrients.
Another benefit is lees scavenge oxygen and ML bacteria also prefer reductive environments. Diacetyl is produced from ML bacteria as a byproduct of their activity.
Different ML strains produce different amounts. Also, inoculate for ML after alcoholic fermentation is over, as active yeast eat diacetyl. Conversely, one way of lowering diacetyl levels is to age on the lees, as well as inoculating for ML a couple days into alcoholic fermentation with a low diacetyl producer, like VP41 or O-Mega. Lees aging discourages protein colloids protein haze from forming when a wine is exposed to heat. In general, sur lie ageing is more commonly associated with white and sparkling wines than red wines, though sur-lie aged reds do exist.
Winemakers who choose to implement sur lie ageing must work very carefully, as leaving untouched lees on the bottom of a vessel for too long can create undesirable aromas rotten egg, sulphur in the wine. Ageing on the lees can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or years, depending on the viticultural region and specific winemaker preference. Certain regions, such as Champagne , require a minimum amount of sur lie ageing 12 months, in the instance of non-vintage Champagne by appellation law.
First, the binding of proteins to tannins serves to remove tannins and shape the mouthfeel of the wine. Second, the layers of lees in the bottom of your aging vessel absorb oxygen thus protecting it as it serves up new character.
Sur lie aging can be a really beneficial process to take your wine through if done carefully and with a lot of attention being paid to how the taste is progressing. As you taste your wine be aware that there is a limit to the positive effects of this process. For your first try at sur lie aging consider racking a gallon or even just a bottle or so of wine, with the lees, and take it too far on purpose. Not that we want to ruin any of your wine but it would be helpful to understand what flavors and aromas develop as the process goes beyond the beneficial stages.
I am a bit confused. At what point do you rack off gross lees and continue processing on fine lees. The methods described above pertain to aging on the fine lees as this is the more common form of sur lie aging.
A wine should be racked off the gross lees after five to seven days. Gross lees can settle out at different rates depending on the fruit and carbon dioxide production. I can imagine a situation with a vigorous yeast producing a lot of carbon dioxide and keeping the lees pretty well churned up. In summary, I would sit on the gross lees for five to seven days, rack off of it, then proceed with the battonage schedule of stiring the fine lees.
Thank you for the question! Sur Lie : audio-icon Wines aged sur lie French for "on the lees" are kept in contact with the dead yeast cells and are not racked or otherwise filtered. This is mainly done for whites, to enrich them.
It is a normal part of fermenting red wine, and so is not noted.
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