March 11, 2021
On the second day of the virtual B.E.V. NY conference, March 4, the two-hour enology session featured a panel discussion on the cold stabilization of wine. Because the entire conference was online, the panelists were remotely connected and consisted of Dr. Gavin Sacks, professor of food science at Cornell University and two researchers at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Patricia Howe, postdoctoral scientist in the department of viticulture and enology, and Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, professor in the same department.
According to Sacks, a “stable” wine is one that has an “acceptably low risk of undergoing undesirable changes.” In other words, stability is a relative, not absolute, term and there are times when a wine can pass one cold stability test, but then fail a second test. He described the basics of potassium bitartrate (KHT) precipitation in wine as being similar to framing a house. The first few boards put up to form a single wall of a house