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Our kits tend to have a softer, more complex flavour profile than you might expect. We achieve this partly by carefully choosing our oak styles and the protocols for using them. By including the oak in with the fermentation (instead of after) we get a much softer profile, which includes some butter and vanilla notes, as opposed to woody or smoky characters.
Now you can’t do malolactic on the kits. It will end in tears if you try. However, there is a technique called ‘battonage’ that will help fatten up the finish of the wine, and give it a rich, creamy mouth feel. Here’s the deal:
- Make you kit up as normal, and rack to the secondary carboy on day 5-7 as directed.
- After ten days, ignore the instructions about fining and stabilising. Instead, add one-quarter teaspoon of metabisulphite powder to the wine, and gently stir it up with a sanitised spoon.
- Get all of the yeast sediment in to suspension, make sure it’s nice and cloudy, but don’t splash or agitate.
- Top up with some decent Chardonnay wine (this is better than using water for this technique). At three or four day intervals, go back and stir the yeast up again.
- Repeat every three or four days for a month.
- Let the wine settle for two weeks, rack it into a clean, sanitised carboy, and follow all the remaining instructions on schedule, omitting no detail however slight.
By stirring the yeast into suspension repeatedly you get the benefits of the amino acids they carry, along with a host of compounds—principally mannoproteins, which give they creamy aroma and mouth feel.
Good luck, and I hope you enjoy your kit.
Cheers,
Tim Vandergrift
Technical Services Manager
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