sulfur

originally posted by Alice F.:
So2What are you guys talking about?
I want to jump into the water but there are sharks in there, and they are oxidized and their fins trump their sea. Please send help.
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Alice, some of this is related to this thread here where I picked up your mention on your blog of the whole Chauvet/Neauport distinction and Eric T. gave some interesting insight on the whole subject. I don't know if I'm being redundant here, I think the rest has to do with good times in Barbera-land.

Cheers,

Kevin
 
originally posted by guilhaume:
originally posted by Brzme:
originally posted by guilhaume:

meaning they liars? or meaning there is a higher content of sulfur occuring naturaly?
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I guess both?

But really I have never seen more than 20ppm occuring naturally with native yeasts on any of my wines.

And I would say that not a lot of the sans souffre wines I checked were below this.
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i guess both as well, but dont you think some terroirs, winemaking or viticulture techniques can affect the amount of sulfur occuring naturally?
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Yup.
 
originally posted by guilhaume:
originally posted by Brzme:
originally posted by guilhaume:


i guess both as well, but dont you think some terroirs, winemaking or viticulture techniques can affect the amount of sulfur occuring naturally?
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Why should I know?
This has never been studied to my knowledge.
What I know is that most of the good vignerons who used to be well known for their bright and pure "sans souffre" wines are announcing " juste la mise" these days...
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i mean, you work on different soils for example, with different grapes. Don't you think it's possible that chalk and pinot brings different amounts of naturally occuring sulfur than chalk and chardonnay? Or slate vs marne and so on...

and yes, thank god, a lot of the sans soufre fanatics are finally starting to understand their wines better, but there's a whole generation of new vignerons taking over in the same old philosophy...
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Sure it's possible. But so is re-incarnation.

This is an empirical question with an answer. Someone just needs to either find the data or run the experiment.

Maybe Mark or Joe can explain how things like soil Ph might affect the sulfur content in a finished wine. I don't see it, but I never went past college physical chemistry.

I really don't understand the religiously zeal against sulfur. I also like wines made with new oak. It's all a matter of balance and whether the whole is an honest representation of weather, site, and grape(s).

Or maybe I mean creates an honest mental representation of such things. Fatboy was around somewhere, maybe he can distinguish between them.
 
originally posted by VLM:


Maybe Mark or Joe can explain how things like soil Ph might affect the sulfur content in a finished wine.
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Not me.

Off the top of my head I would guess that there is plenty of the element sulfur in grape juice, but it's probably mostly in the form of cysteine and methionine bound up in proteins. Getting from there to SO2 I would guess to be something that happens only in fermentation. What influence site and soil would have to divert the fermentation products to include more SO2 I have no particular idea.

pH, btw.
 
Like Joe, I assume that all of the naturally-produced SO2 originates from cysteine and methionine. It seems reasonable that the levels of these amino acids in the must could be influence by soil, climate, and farming practices.
 
originally posted by Arjun Mendiratta:
Like Joe, I assume that all of the naturally-produced SO2 originates from cysteine and methionine.
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Protein is surely most of the sulfur pool, but I wouldn't say all. The amounts of SO2 we're talking about are low enough that you could imagine them coming from a relatively rare precursor.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Arjun Mendiratta:
Like Joe, I assume that all of the naturally-produced SO2 originates from cysteine and methionine.
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Protein is surely most of the sulfur pool, but I wouldn't say all. The amounts of SO2 we're talking about are low enough that you could imagine them coming from a relatively rare precursor.
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I agree wholeheartedly. We're not talking about a lot of SO2 here.
 
Last weekend I was with Justin Lett who had a neat project for me. We headed to his laboratory where he wanted to find out just how much sulphur was in Tissot's sans soufre. After one hour of taking temperatures and seeing reds turn to blue and purples and got knows what else, we found the answer. S02, negligible. Jason was like, "guess he's not tricking us."
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Arjun Mendiratta:
Like Joe, I assume that all of the naturally-produced SO2 originates from cysteine and methionine.
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Protein is surely most of the sulfur pool, but I wouldn't say all. The amounts of SO2 we're talking about are low enough that you could imagine them coming from a relatively rare precursor.
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Spray residues (from either elemental sulfur or the sulfate portion of copper sulfate) are probably present in enough quantities to account for some of the naturally occuring SO2.
If I recall my studies correctly, both of these are proven to be sources of sulfide (with a "d") production in fermentations. Another big cause of sulfide production would be nutrient deficiencies in the must, driving the yeasts to catabolize S-containing proteins for the nutrients contained therein.
All of that is for sulfide production, but it's not hard to think of ways that sulfite production could follow along some of the same pathways.

Cheers,
 
I know it's not a lot of sulfur, but doesn't spraying cease about a month before harvest, i.e. enough time to not matter?
 
originally posted by Yixin:
I know it's not a lot of sulfur, but doesn't spraying cease about a month before harvest, i.e. enough time to not matter?
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Mostly, yes. But sometimes there's that last minute spray, you know, "just to be sure". Weird weather will cause growers to lose their minds.
 
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