I Like Sediment April 21, 2018 10:02

Wine Sediment. You won't find it all the time, but when you do consider yourself lucky.

A Dictionary definition of sediment: “Matter that settles to the bottom of liquid.”

You will find sediment in wine because wine is a  liquid containing matter. Delicious matter.  If a wine is not industrially processed natural tannins, acids, tartrates and pigments can sometimes settle and appear on the bottom and sides of a bottle and on the cork.

Sediment is the sign of a wines authenticity.  A wine that retains all its natural structure and ingredients from the grape.

When wineries process their wines to strip out sediment the character of the wine is diminished. But processing is done anyhow because of fear that their customers will reject a wine that has sediment.

I prefer to embrace the integrity of a whole natural wine. I eschew processing, so that all of a grapes tasty elements remain.  When you hear terms like unfiltered and unfined, this is indication that a wine is not processed.                                                                                                                

  Sediment in white wine may be tartaric crystals as you see on this cork or in bottom of the bottle. Sometimes a small amount of powdery white sediment settles. 

The places to find red wine sediment are on the cork, adhering to the bottle wall or loose on the bottom.

The wine itself is always clear unless you shake the bottle.

 Sediment is a perfectly harmless indication that you have a good natural bottle of wine. Here you see sediment stuck to the inside of a bottle.

 

The article below tells more of the story.