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| Fermentation tanks. |
In white wines, after the pressing, it takes place the division of the must. The first musts are the best quality ones and they are known as free-run juice; it is a liquid of a great lightness and fineness, it’s aromatic, soft, floral and fruity.
The musts we get contain solid suspended matters. In order to divide these matters we proceed to the racking: it consists in leaving the must static and coldly during 24 hours, so that the solid elements fall down to the bottom. After the racking of the cleaned musts they are taken to the alcoholic fermentation, a process that transforms the sugar of the must into alcohol and other organic products.
The fermentation is considered finished when the wine contains less than 2 grams of sugar per litre. Once finished, the wine is racked in order to remove the lees (or death yeast). After this racking, the own proteins of wine can turn it unstable so we proceed to do the clarification with the help of substances responsible for carrying the proteins and lay them down at the bottom of the tank.
The next step before bottling or putting the wine in barrels is the filtration, which provides the stability that the wine needs for its consumption keeping.
| A graph of the making of white wine. Click to enlarge. |
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