4 replies to this topic

[bhumble]

I am fairly new to wine making, I have made four kits. My question is does it make any difference if I age in the bottles or in the carboy. I have a 200 bottle cellar with plenty of room so I don't want to tie up my carboys for 6 months to bulk age. I would rather bottle and age in my rack so I can start another batch to get stocked up. After I have my racks full then I can bulk age until I have room in the rack. Any advice about ageing in a bottle vs bulk would be nice

[Jeff D]

Either one will work, I think you get a more uniform wine when you bulk age.

Jeff

[Seb]

If you can, it's always better to bulk age than bottle age. The wine age better in bulk than in little quantity and you can always monitored the wine and intervene if something happen. You will also eliminate some bottle sediment over time. Of course after maybe 1 full year of bulk aging the wine will need to be bottled and some chimic reaction can only occur in anaerobic condition so the wine will need enventually to be bottled.

[WineThief]

I have a 200 bottle cellar with plenty of room so I don't want to tie up my carboys for 6 months to bulk age.

Pretty much the same thing happen to me. Soooo,, I just went out and picked up 2 more 6 gal carboys and 2 more 3 gal carboys. Then it seemed that when I had an empty one, I needed to put something in it.. Of course then I didn't have an empty one to rack to so I picked up another one.. Currently I am up to 6 -6gal carboys and 4 -3gal ccarboys

What I was finding is that because I didn't have enough carboy space, I seemed to be rushing my wine to the bottle.. Although it tastes pretty good, I started getting really alot of sediment in the bottles even though the wine looked clear when I bottled it.. Now that I have more carboy space I don't rush anything to bottle, and the last 2 bottlings are showing no signs of sediment so far, plus the flavor seems better when left to bulk age..

My personal opinion, as a newbe winemaker, is that If you don't mind sediment and a slight loss of flavor, age in the bottle, otherwise Bulk Age in a carboy..

[davdrive]

slow down newbie, let it age in the carboy ,you will thank us later.