Enology

Other Considerations

Stability

With cool cellar temperatures, no tartaric acid additions, and two winters of barrel aging our red wines are reasonably cold stable. They do not require cold stabilization operations. With the above regimen, the wine should be brilliantly clear and able to go directly to the bottle without filtration.

Occasionally, they get a small degree of Brettanomyces growth in our wines during aging. Depending on the amount of such growth they may recommend a light pad filtration for the single lot. Otherwise, their goal is to minimize all cellar treatment including filtration.

Though Spring Mountain wines go into the bottle brilliant, they will develop a sediment of tartrate and pigment over normal aging. This will be a slow process, and the wines are designed to be brilliantly clear during the first several years after bottling given normal cellar temperatures.

Cold stability is a time-temperature relationship. The colder a wine the more insoluble are potassium and calcium tartrates. The colder a wine the faster these tartrates will settle out. If a wine has a tartrate deposit it is easily decanted off that deposit to ensure brilliance in the glass.