The secondary fermentation - where bacteria turn most of the remaining sugar into alcohol - will continue slowly.
The taste of the juice was of wine, but very "raw". After a day or two, I poured off the clear wine from the bottle into one glass, and the "lees" at the bottom of the bottle into another glass. The contrast is clear. This lees consists of sediment from the grapes as well as dead yeast cells.
This is an example of what is in the barrel at the moment. The lees tasted more or less the same, but didn't look very appetising!
This week we will rack the white, maybe the red too.
I need to make a few corrections to your post.
ReplyDeleteFirst, a secondary fermentation, by simple definition, is simply the continuation of fermentation after racking the wine into a new vessel. If the wine is not "dry", that is if there is residual sugar, the yeast still present will continue to convert this sugar into ethanol. The racking is also done to get the wine off the gross lees, which can impart off flavors, and allow settling and clarification.
The secondary fermentation is also where malolactic fermentation (or MLF) occurs. This is where the bacteria come into play, where the bacteria converts malic acid into softer lactic acid. The bacteria do not convert sugars to ethanol. You also don't want your white wines to go through MLF except for perhaps Chardonnay.