Wine of the Month Club | Sediment

 

Paul:                      Welcome, Val!

Val:                        Hi!  How are you?

Paul:                      Val’s general manager of the Wine of the Month Club and he’s the one that’s fielding all these calls about sediment.

Val:                        Sediment, yeah, Paul, I get some questions from time to time.  People call in.  They love the wine, they love the value, but they see some sediment and little crystallization going on it.

Paul:                      Sediment.

Val:                        What is that?

Paul:                      Sediment.  I don’t know what it is and I don’t really care.  That’s not really a problem for us so that’s the end of this video now.

Val:                        Excellent!

Paul:                      Thanks for coming.

Val:                        Thanks for tuning in, alright.

Paul:                      Sediments are a great thing actually.  Sediments means quality, actually.  It means a lot of things.  For one, it means the wine was really well extracted that when it was crushed.  It means that it’s probably aged.  And the last two wines that we had little situation with was 2006’s so that means they’re well extracted.  So that actually means it’s a good thing.

Val:                        Yup.

Paul:                      It means that you bought a nice wine and it’s not a bad thing.  In fact, I was talking to my dad about this and he said Burgundy which is the home of PNOR, some of the wine makers like to, at the bottom of the glass, take their finger and take the sediment out of, and feel it and taste it because it’s acid.  It’s tartaric acid.  So what happens is as the wine ages, it throws off the acids, the chemical reaction, and it actually smoothes things out.  So for instance, if we’re going to do this, just to say, we’re going to crush some grapes here.  So if we’re going to squeeze the grapes and make some wine here, now look at this, kind of clear the juice but then we put the skins in there, it becomes red. And that’s where the color comes from.

Val:                        I thought those are fake grapes.  You actually got water out of fake grapes but that’s very good demonstration.  I like that.

Paul:                      I actually like that we can make, these are red seedless from Chile so this is a Chilean wine that we’re making here.

Val:                        Great, great!  We’ll add that to the vat on the back of the warehouse.

Paul:                      That’s right.  So if we’re going to pour this, just take a look at this [inaudible 1:40] cabernet which is one of the wines that we had.  You might see sediment in the shoulder here which we don’t in this case, but a wine that throws out sediment often will settle here.  And you want that to happen.

Val:                        Is that from the bottles being stored in an inverted level like that?

Paul:                      That’s exactly right.  If you keep the bottles upside down at least on their side, your sediment will form here and also form in the punt down here.  An argument as to what punts are for, one of them is for sediment but that’s not really making any sense.  If you finally have sediment in your wine, what you want to do is leave it upright 24 hours.  You want to leave it upright in an area that you’re going to decant it.

Val:                        Okay.

Paul:                      Because that’s one way to get rid of sediment.

Val:                        Alright.

Paul:                      You can decant it or filter it.

Val:                        So a lot of our customers don’t want to wait 24 hours to get their wine in mail.  They open it up.  They don’t want to wait 24 hours.  What can they do to get to the wine right away?  Would that be decanting?

Paul:                      Well, you decant it but to decant it, you want all of sediments to settle at the bottom that takes 24 hours.

Val:                        Okay.

Paul:                      What you can do is filter it.

Val:                        Ah, okay.

Paul:                      In fact, we had a Facebook comment today that we use a coffee filter.  She says “We use a coffee filter.”  I think one of those brown, those organic coffee filters would work fine.  They make those aerators now.  We demonstrated on TV, they have filters built in on them.  But the bottom line is don’t worry about the sediment.  It’ll go to the bottom of your glass and don’t drink it.

Val:                        Some people are used to the sediments so that’s why they’re calling me and they’re saying, “What is this stuff in here? Is it a lower quality of wine?”  But I guess it’s in the way that it’s crushed, would you say?  Is that the way?

Paul:                      Well it has something to do with the extraction, of the crush time, but actually probably is it’s suggesting it’s a really good wine that was made and that is thrown up.  Wine basically got solids in it and it will dissipate after time.  And the other culprit that we had recently with sediment was Sierra.  It was River Grove Sera.  And we’ll look in here now.  There’s a little bit of sediments starting to grow there.  I mean it’s starting to settle there.

Val:                        Yeah.

Paul:                      And that could be one of the issues that the customers have.  But there’s nothing wrong with sediments.  That’s the bottom line.  If I was to decant this, I would have this set up for 24 hours.  I would gently move the bottle over to its position, and I would normally just put a flashlight here or a candle. And I want to be in position to stand over the wine.  I would tilt these gently together and I would start to pour.  And the light should shine through the neck of the bottle. And as soon as I start to see sediment come through, I would stop pouring.  And that way, you would end up with nice clear wine in the decanter.  And you would end up with an inch, inch and a half of wine in here that you would just dispose of and the rest will be sediment.

Val:                        I see.  That’s why I often see sometimes people at restaurants where they don’t finish off all of the wine.  Would that be?

Paul:                      That’s absolutely right, because of the sediment.

Val:                        Okay.

Paul:                      Now this has a lot of sediment in it so that’s too much sediment.

Val:                        That’s kind of overkill sediment.

Paul:                      Yeah, I think it’s too much.

Val:                        Right.

Paul:                      Anyway, thanks for watching.  That’s sediment and we’ll put up some other videos for you.

Val:                        These are also available on our website. If you want to buy one of these decanters, they’re also available for sale too.

Paul:                      And this is not.

Val:                        No, not.

Paul:                      Okay.