734 Agricultural Journal of Victoria. 



THE CLARIFICATION AND LIMPIDITY OF 

 WHITE WINES.* 



By J. Lahorde. Translated hy M. d'A. Burney. 



I. 



Limpidity is one of the most important qualities that wines must 

 possess when ready for consumption. It is well known that if this 

 quality is not at its maximum a delicate wine does not give the 

 impression expected of it, and a wine that is not perfectly limpid 

 ought not to be tasted. Perhaps it is even more necessary that a 

 white wine should be perfectly brilliant when tasted than a red 

 wine, because in this case the eye is affected to the same extent as the 

 nose and the palate, while hardly in the same degree with a red 

 wine. The pale golden colour not over accentuated, the brilliance of 

 the wine as clear as crystal, are, for the taster, qualities which 

 favourably impress him for the sensations to follow. Now this much 

 desired brilliance is not always to be obtained without much trouble. 

 It is, on the contrary, one of the chief difficulties in the making of 

 white wines. We will examine the diverse phases of the clarification 

 of these wines, the causes of cloudiness, and the best methods of 

 arriving at complete limpidity. 



II. 



While red wine is often fairly clear when it is taken from the vat, 

 or clears completely after a few weeks in cask, white wine is often 

 months before losing the milky appearance so well known in young 

 white wines. This cloudiness is due, at first particularly, to the 

 yeasts of the secondary fermentation, which only deposit themselves 

 slowly because they gradually diminish in size and activity as the 

 medium becomes more and more unfavourable to their development. 

 But, after the depositing of the yeasts, the white wine is not yet bright, 

 for it has often for a long time an opalescent cloud due to the presence 

 and physical action of certain albuminous matters in the must. If it 

 is not exactly the same in the case of red wines, it is because of the 

 abundance of tannoid matters, which, in uniting with the albuminous 

 matters, determine their coagulation and precipitation in the lees. In 

 the must of ordinary white wines the quantity of tannin is 10 times 

 less on the average than in red wines, that is to say, that it is in the 

 proportion of a few grains per gallon only while the albuminous 

 matters are always in greater proportion. Now as the coagulation of 

 these matters requires a weight equal to their own of tannin, it is 

 evident why it is incomplete. It seems, therefore, that no traces of 

 tannin should be found in the wine in these circumstances, but that 

 is never the case. Experiments have proved that small quantities of 



*J. Laborde, Sub-Director of the Agronomical and Qsnological Station of Bordeaux, in the Revue de 

 Viticulture, Nos. 525, 526, 528, 529. 



