What about a partial conversion? I have heard wine salesmen state their wine was put through a 30% conversion ect. Is this legitimate or is it an all or none situation in general. This was for white wines.
Great question that I forgot to address in the cast! (Damn.) I'm gonna pin this in the hopes that people see it and the response. It is possible to arrest malo part way through the process (e.g., use SO2 on it and then filter) but there's no way to know how much malic acid has been converted if you do that. So, when you hear about partial malo, especially with a percentage given, what's happened is almost certainly blending -- i.e., the producer has blended some barrels that have gone through malo with wine from barrels that haven't; thus, if the producer blends a cuvée from 3 barrels of Chard that have gone through malo and 7 barrels that haven't then the resulting cuvée is 30% malo and so on. Thanks again for the question and I hope that helps. Cheers!
I hardly ever take the time to post comments, but your videos are so incredibly useful I really wanted to take the time to thank you for them! As I understood you are making these to help you study with your own courses? I'm currently using them as a helpful extra to study for the very similar content in the WSET 3 course. They surely are an amazing help! Thanks again man, cheers from Belgium!
Discovered your videos about a week ago and have been enjoying watching them. Thanks for putting together well researched well presented videos that are easy to watch.
Fascinating. I mostly make mead and melomels using mostly (so far) dark berries and cranberries and am thinking about doing a blueberry melomel doing MLC as well as oaking it in secondary and am curious how this might work with blueberries? Thanks for this very informative description of the process.
Just a reminder. There are stains of cultured yeast that will feed on malic acid. However, this is not the same as malolactic fermentation because the yeast is not converting the malic acid to lactic acid like bacteria cultures would. The yeast just convert some of the malic acid to CO2 I believe. But using acid reducing yeast cultures is a good alternative to MLF if you want the more rounded acidity without the added butter. Correct anything if I worded something wrong or acted like I knew what I was talking about
Can you breed/multiply and store your own malolactic bacteria from bought Malo inoculants? Like adding it to wine or grape juice then placing in a fridge for later use, and so on.
I'm a bit confused as to why you say that MLF isn't a 'true' fermentation. The word has a long history and a few different definitions, depending on how technical you want to get. The most technical standard I found is an enzyme induced reaction of an organic molecule taking place in the absence of oxygen and producing energy. How does MLF not meet this? Malic acid is an organic molecule and its conversion to lactic acid is enzymatic and anaerobic.
Thanks for the message. MLF/MLC is a decarboxylation, and microbiologists find it useful to distinguish between this process and a fermentation. Here are a couple of examples: www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=2ahUKEwiG76yT-_DiAhXmiFQKHQj3DQwQFjACegQIAxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.sun.ac.za%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10019.1%2F103673%2Fduplessis_effect_2018.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1%26isAllowed%3Dy&usg=AOvVaw00B5iEshsaWQH74UQ7OqY3 (p. 66 in PDF "Malolactic fermentation is not a true “fermentation”, but rather an enzymatic reaction whereby malic acid is decarboxylated to lactic acid and CO2.") winesociety.stanford.edu/my-first-crush-update (Discussion at the bottom of page headed by "**".) You're correct (as the second source also acknowledges) that there are many definitions of "fermentation" out there, but I follow the Saussurean principle of letting the speech community that uses the term define its usage. In this case, the community of microbiologists seems to make a distinction between decarboxylation and fermentation; so, I follow their lead. I hope that's helpful. Thanks again for the question and cheers!
@@TheUnknownWinecaster Thanks for the reply and explanation! I can't even count the number of debates I've had on semantics. Language is a profoundly frustrating thing and I think this is a prime example. MLF meets the technical requirements of a fermentation by nearly every measure that I could find, but it's a totally different process than alcoholic fermentation. So if you're a scientist that specializes in microbiology, especially in regards to wine, it makes sense to call them different things. It's awkward, because the term has been in use for longer than we've understood the processes. So now it's an odd sort of blanket term. It's also used to describe the process of converting ethanol to acetic acid. There is no "true" fermentation unless you choose to define it narrowly for a specific purpose. I guess my point is that I wouldn't suggest people are technically wrong for saying MLF instead of MLC because it's just too vague a term to get into semantics on. Sorry for the rant, it's all in good spirits!
I have been hearing that almost every red goes through mlc (especially new world), how much would you say this is done intentionally, with addition of lactic acid, and how much happens on its own? I see pronounced effects in California reds, especially.
These days virtually all MLC/F is intentional -- either the winemaker inoculated or put the wine in an environment where she expected MLC/F to occur (e.g., barrels that have gone through malo before). Someone working in a naturalist or low-intervention style might have trouble getting malo going in some circumstances (because they might opt not to inoculate) or a producer might want to suppress malo for a certain style (red Vinho Verde comes to mind), but that's about it. Hope that's helpful. Cheers!
