09/16/05 Wine diamonds

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran and earlier this week we discussed how white wines are made and it brought to mind an aspect of white wine that we occasionally see and that is the appearance of wine Diamonds. Have you ever noticed tiny crystals or flakes in the bottom of a bottle of wine? No it isn't broken glass. They are tiny crystals often referred to as wine diamonds. Wine diamonds what a sexy sounding description for something that's really quite boring. They do have a crystalline look to them that resembles a precious stone. We seem to notice them most often in white wine. Those tiny sparkly crystals at the bottom of the bottle, that may inadvertently be poured into your glass, and that sometimes appear on the bottom of the cork, those are the wine diamonds. They are nothing more than the natural evolution of tartaric acid in wines. The youthful roughness of a wine is often the result of the stronger nature of the wine's tartaric acid. With age the tartaric acid transforms to insoluable, meaning that they are no longer dissolved, potassium bitartrate and it solidifies into those tiny harmless, tasteless crystals. A wine with tartrate crystals alone should not be judged negatively. It's mostly an esthetic issue. There are many ways in which a winery is able to keep those crystals to a minimum. Most wineries will employ filtration or cold stabilization to prevent the crystals from appearing. But harmless crystals in clear wine are nothing to be concerned about. However, if the wine is also cloudy, there may be something wrong with it. That happens so infrequently that most of us will never see it. So crystals alone - don't be concerned about it, simply enjoy your encounter with wine diamonds and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.