when is a year, a year?

[Paul]

So I have 20 bottles of various Elderberry attempts, 4 1-gallon batches. The recipe says best after one year. Is that from first pitching yeast, ending fermentation, bottling. I started these last June, should I think this June is acceptable? Or should I pick a later date to start my year.

I tried to backtrack over posts and must have missed a discussion on this. I did a bulk age for six months on the elderberry before stabilizing and bottling, bottled in Nov/Dec. Just wanting to enjoy the fruits of my labor here.

Paul

[Hippie]

In order to compensate for bulk aging and bottling, I will go out on a limb and give my opinion. I think you have to start counting the months when you have the wine in a state where you are ready to bottle, regardless if you bottle then or wait and bulk age before bottling, as long as you do not alter the wine further, including filtering or just racking. So if you had the wine ready to bottle last June and you bulk aged until December and it has been in the bottle for 6 months this coming June, that will be a year.

Let the games begin!

(Dejavous hitting me pretty hard here!)

[Mamgiowl]

(Dejavous hitting me pretty hard here!)

Never mind, Hippie, have another drink and a lie down in a darkened room!

A supplementary question now.
When labelling, what date to put on it. The date when you first started or the date when the wine was ready for bottling?

[Hippie]

Can't, I'm at work!

The year the fruit was harvested (or the year you got it off the store shelf) and the date bottled.

[DAVID]

To make matters a little more confusing I was always led to believe that all reds should be left for 18 months - 2yrs once the batch has been racked, stabilised, de-gassed and filtered.

Sometimes though as some of us will have experienced that some reds will mature alot quicker than others depending on the method of fermentation that has been used.

[Hippie]

Distilling seems to get it ready to drink alot faster!

Just my opinion!

[Dead Squirrel Running]

I have no idea what I'm talking about so like most politicians I have the utmost confidence in what I know not or just say, trust me, ha ha.

Of course the label is the year of harvest, always. For home wine makers using tins I guess that would be the start of fermentation.

The original question, have we divined or deviated, on aging would be bottle age of course, whether it was in bulk aging for two years or not wouldn’t’ matter, but it certainly does help the aging process. Still with the small amount of wine considered, why not bottle when the wine is cleared? Almost all wines, including fruit wines will benefit from a minimum of one year in the bottle. Elderberry is about as close to wine made from wine grapes as we’ll find in another fruit and heavy tannin, so probably a few month more wouldn’t hurt.

[Hippie]

I kinda agree somewhat. The thang about bulkaging is, it is ready to bottle, just aging slower than would in bottles. Just my opinion, and may or may not make sense to folks intellectually more advanced than us cavemen.

[suefreck]

Elderberry usually takes time for the tannins to mature out - unless you have added oak or malt to do that for you. I took some to a tasting last night,only made in October and it was the most popular one (Usually is - it rarely gets time to mature!). Suggest if you've bottled the lot you try it at its various stages in a vertical comparison and then go from there.

[Hippie]

How will adding oak or malt cause the tannins to mature? Oak will add more tannin. Don't know about malt other than it is fermentable. Please explain.