I had been reading a little about sure lie. I have a wine that was just racked and is in the clearing stage was wondering if there would be any benefit in gently stirring up the lees to keep the protoplasm suspended in it. Any experiments out there on this. Jake Keller had bragged about doing some kind of chocholate with it on twitter, but he got a table and used the magnets and Im sure he used the whole surelie process.

bob1,

Now I see what you are talking about. The sur-lie process is leaving the wine on the fine lees without racking for up to 6 months. The fine lees are stirred weekly for the first couple of months and then stirred monthly. The wine should be tested for hydrogen sulphide during the process or it can spoil. You can usually tell by the rotten egg type odor. The sur-lie process is used quite a bit in France in the production of champagne and making muscadet grape wine. The wine is supposed to take on more flavor. Jack Keller mentions the stirring of fine lees a little on his web site but does not suggest going 6 month without racking unless I missed it somewhere. I have never tried the process and always rack my wine at least every 2 months. I always rack off of the gross lees within 3 weeks although I have left wine on the gross lees for up to 6 weeks. Just plain forgot about it. The hydrogen sulphide odor went away when I splashed racked the wine off of the gross lees although it took a few weeks to go away. That wine turned out great.

We are in an area where we have a lot of barometric changes and sometimes my air locks will attempt to suck the water down into the carboy. If I see that happening I always add more campden and of coarse stir the wine. When I stir that moves the fine lees around.

The gentle stirring of the fine lees using the sur-lie process is certainly different than vigorously stirring to outgas the wine.

All of that said, I would only suggest you not rack for up to 6 months and practice that process if you are not a beginning winemaker because of the hytdrogen sulphide that can ruin the wine. Many of the winemakers on the forums are just getting into winemaking.

Good to have you on this forum bob1. We need more winemakers like you that are into researching the winemaking process. Some of this stuff gives others some real insite to the winemaking process.