Straightforward · 23.0 litres · Crisp dry white
Sauvignon Blanc
The opposite recipe to the Chardonnay: no oak, no malolactic, no lees stirring and no warmth at any point. Everything worth having in this wine is volatile and most of it can be lost before fermentation starts.
Starting sugar
21.3 Brix
5.34 kg of fermentable sugar
Original gravity
1.089
from the ingredients, not asserted
Finishing gravity
0.995
dry
Alcohol
12.3%
Brix alone predicts 11.7 to 12.8%
Residual sugar
0 g/L
approximate, from gravity
Ready after
3 months
best around 2 years
Made to Crisp dry white, and every computed figure lands inside the published range for it.
ABV inTA inpH inRS inWhat decides this wine
Cold, from the press to the bottle. Chill the fruit before crushing if you can, sulphite at the crusher, settle the juice cold, ferment at 13 to 16C, and bottle within six months. Every degree and every hour costs you aroma.
What goes in
| Ingredient | Weight | Sugar | Volume | Share of sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sauvignon Blanc21.5 Brix (picked off the midpoint) Picked early on purpose. A day of hang time past this trades gooseberry for tinned tropical fruit. | 34.00 kg | 5.34 kg | 22.78 L | 100% |
The ingredients contribute 22.8 litres and the water makes up the rest to 23 litres. Those figures are checked against each other when the site is built, because a recipe whose volumes do not add up produces a wine weaker or stronger than every number above.
Acid and sulphite
Acidity of the must
8.0 g/L
at pH 3.15
No malolactic
8.0 g/L
the acidity you measure is the acidity you keep
Potassium bicarbonate
26 g
to reach 7.0 g/L. Bench trial before treating the batch
Sulphite at bottling
0.8 g
potassium metabisulphite, for 20 mg/L free SO2 at pH 3.20
The batch
- Must volume
- 23 L
- Ferment at
- 13-16 C
- Molecular SO2 target
- 0.8 mg/L
- Malolactic
- No
- Yeast
- QA23to 16%, low N
The sulphite figure is worked out against the pH of the finished wine, not of the must. Malolactic and deacidification both raise pH, and dosing a finished red to its must pH under-protects it by roughly a third. Recompute for your own reading.
Method
- 01Chill the fruit overnight. Press gently and sulphite the juice at the press at 50 mg/L.
- 02Settle cold for 24 hours and rack off the solids.
- 03Pitch QA23, which releases the bound thiols that are most of this variety's aroma.
- 04Ferment at 13 to 16C. It will take three weeks, which is the point.
- 05Rack, sulphite to a molecular target for your pH, and cold stabilise.
- 06Bottle within six months. This wine does not improve with keeping.
The two instruments this recipe needs
Every number on this page came from a hydrometer reading and a pH reading. Without those two you are following a recipe rather than making a wine, and the sulphite figure in particular is meaningless without a pH you have actually measured.
Measuring
Hydrometer and trial jar
SOLIGT Triple Scale Hydrometer and Glass Test Jar for Wine, Beer, Mead & Cider - ABV, Brix and Gravity Test Kit
$18.98
Tracks the ferment from must to dry. The gap between your starting and finishing gravity is the only reliable way to know the alcohol you actually made.
Measuring
pH meter
Apera Instruments AI1113 pH Calibration Buffer Solution Kit (7.00, 4.00), 8 oz. Each
$18.00
The most important instrument on this page. pH decides how much of your sulphite is actually protecting the wine, and dosing without knowing it is guesswork.