Tartaric Crystals in Wine: the "Wine Diamonds" of Quality

Have you ever come across what appear to be white flakes floating in a bottle of wine? Did you assume that this snow world seems somehow mean the wine is flawed or destroyed?

What is most likely to see the wine crystals, commonly referred to as "wine diamonds" or Weinstein ("wine stone") in German speaking countries. Thus, these wine diamonds signal a bad bottle of wine?

Opinions on this issue are divided, and the reason is simple: you bought flawless wine, but have not bought aesthetically flawless wine. Depending on where you are from, it might matter to you more or less.

American wine drinker is not used for finding diamonds in a wine bottle. Here, most wines undergo a cold stabilization process, which is when the wine is cooled before being bottled, so the white flakes, called crystallized tartaric acid, "fall out" and can be separated from the wine. But what price beauty? Cold stabilization of wine affects balance and flavors: as some winemakers put, wine is actually ripped apart, and rapid cooling changes wine colloidal structures. You could call it a clear case of style over substance.

There is another interesting correlation between wine stones and the quality of wine: more grapes hang on the vine (familiarly called "hang time"), more wine acid will accumulate in the grape, and it is this wine acid which is building block of wine diamonds. Furthermore, the more time the wine is given the turmoil, less wine diamonds will fall during fermentation, but the more they will instead be built later in the bottle.

In other words, wine diamonds are an indication that the grapes are ripe for a long time, and that the winemaker fermented the wine slowly and with great care. Both are important precursors to crafting high quality wines.

Hans GSELLMANN, head of the famous wine GSELLMANN & GSELLMANN winery in Austria, explains it this way: "Part of the grape acid tartrates, aka salt as the wine matures, and tartaric acid crystals fall out .. the natural process of the wine will go through on the way to the peak of its development. When you see these flakes at the bottom of the bottle or the cork, you can be almost sure to open the wine at the right time. you should consider yourself lucky ."

wine lovers in the Old World are known to look for bottles with wine stones as a sign of quality: it indicates that the wine has not been robbed of its structure through unnatural chilling, and it is a sign of well-matured wines. Perhaps this is due to the history of winemaking in these countries people are accustomed to wine stones and seem to accept them. At least they seem to know that, if anything, wine diamonds will have to add roundness to the wine by subtracting some of the acid from it.

There is a new technology comes from France, who promises to bypass the entire colloidal issue: electrodialysis. However, while every major winery has bought one of those fancy French machines (and it will certainly be a few decades), this rule applies: cold stabilization is like tossing the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps you are left with aesthetically flawless wine, but also left less wine.