I will let the wine ferment out. With no sugars left, what could the yeast eat? Do I really need to use the potassium sorbate?
Definitely not. I certainly wouldn’t, unless you’re planning on back-sweetening it. Just make sure you give it plenty of time to completely finish fermenting, and for it to drop crystal clear. Don’t rush it, and it won’t be necessary.
Great! Thanks for your thoughts. No, no back-sweetening. I will let it completely finish. Cool!
Potassium sorbate will assist in stability and enhancing shelf life. If you plan on aging it beware.
I’m going to respectfully disagree. Potassium metabisulphate will enhance shelf life, in that it will prevent oxidation in the wine. But potassium sorbate is there to inhibit yeast budding, which is why it’s important when back-sweetening.
If you’re concerned about shelf life, by all means add some k-meta, but I personally don’t like the taste of sorbate and wouldn’t add it for the purpose of improving shelf life.
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Guess it’s a little bit of both. Sorbate stops wine from spoiling due to yeast and mold. This will stabilize the wine and increase shelf life. Of course, it should be used with potassium metabisulfite, which is an anti-oxidant and will also help with shelf life.
Whites benefit more from the addition than red wines.
That’s a good point about mold, sorbate will inhibit its growth. If you want to go the safest route, sorbate will help in this aspect. However, it will alter the taste of the wine, and I haven’t found it to be necessary for storage. That’s just my experience, and others may have run into issues. As long as your sanitation is decent, though, you should be fine to omit it.
I’m late to the party, but I would say that for a dry white wine, you can safely skip the sorbate, it’s not doing much for you. The alcohol content alone should be good enough to stave off any odd mold infections, which should be very rare indeed.
Sulfite is probably not a bad idea though. However personally I wouldn’t even use sulfite unless aging the wine for many years. If all wine will be gone within like 2 years then personally I would skip it. I find the taste of sulfite to be slightly more objectionable than sorbate, although both have very minor flavor contributions anyway and not everyone is sensitive to them or cares. In some respects their flavors are probably part of the wine experience.
So, in the end, do what you like. It’s going to turn out great either way.
