Mould on elderflower champagne

[devolutionary]

Argh. Two of our four bottles of elderflower champagne have mould on the surface. What should we do? Drink them anyway (except the mould)? Rebottle? Discard?

Please don't say discard.

Alex

[MKG]

More info needed, Alex

Are you sure it's a mould (a photo would help) and not a surface yeast? How old is the champagne? What did you bottle it in? What recipe did you use? How did you clean the bottles before use?

The reason I ask these questions is that it's very difficult for a mould to establish itself in a wine unless something horrible has gone wrong - but if that was the case, how come you have two clear bottles?

If you can't do a photo, try describing the mould - that may help. At the moment, by the way, I'm putting my money on the bottles themselves being the problem.

There's only one way of determining if the infected wine is still drinkable - you know where I'm going, don't you? Pour some off (either using a syphon or by VERY careful and steady pouring, and then smell it. If it smells OK, taste a sip - don't worry, it can't be anything death-dealing. It will either taste as it should or it will have a musty, dampish flavour. If it's the first, you'll need a steady hand to get the rest out of the bottle - it's OK. Otherwise, you could try a massive dose of sodium metabisulphite (Campden tablets - about 4 to a gallon) and I'd recommend this IF you were talking about a couple or three gallons of the stuff. For two bottles? At that point I'd surrender and chuck it.

Mike

[devolutionary]

Hey,
other half here.
I think that poor sterilization may be the problem. I washed the bottles and just used boiling water to sterilize them.It definitely looks like blue/white mould floating on top of some strange brown stringy substance. They were bottled a week ago.I will try the taste test and try rebottling into freshly sterilized bottles.
May just have to go pick some more elderflowers and make a new batch otherwise.
I was nervous because the recipe does not actually use any yeast, just wild yeasts on the flowers, so not sure if the same rules apply about wine and safety?

fingers crossed,
Clare

[MKG]

Hi Clare,

Your stringy substance sounds like "ropiness" which is winemakers jargon for a bacterial infection. The blue stuff on the top is definitely a mould (possibly even penicillin). Sterilising your bottles with boiling water should be perfectly effective (and obviously was in two cases out of four) - but did you also sterilise the stoppers? Also, you've used a wild yeast recipe, which I say time after time on here is risky. Begging for it, even, if you live in the UK - but you're in the Dordogne. As that's a winemaking region, there should be lots of the right kind of yeast in the atmosphere - but it still doesn't preclude a fermentation by entirely the wrong kind of beastie.

You certainly need to get rid of the mould by careful straining. Then, if I'm right about the ropiness, you MUST use Campden tablets to save it. A hefty dose of those and some very vigorous stirring will knock out the bacteria (which are not harmful - just unpleasantly slimy). However, you'll then need to leave the wine alone for a couple of months at least to allow the introduced sulphur dioxide to dissipate.

And PLEEEEASE add yeast in future. Grapes are conducive to the yeast you want. Elderflowers are conducive to anything that comes along.

Let us know how you get on

Mike

[devolutionary]

Back to me again. I think the recipe was John Seymour's. I know Her Outdoors and another friend have looked for recipes with yeast in them and found none - online and in books. If you've already posted one/some, can you point us towards a link? Ta very much. (The 'another friend' lost half her batch last year for the same reason, but we got away with it. It was excellent, too. Everything's an experiment.)

[MKG]

Ah - another Seymour recipe. Much as I'm an admirer of the man's intentions, some of his recipes are catastrophic (ask Annpan about her rhubarb wine). Anyway, glad it turned out OK.

Most yeast-free recipes are basically sound apart from the optimistic insistence on friendly wild yeasts. You don't need another recipe - just use the one you have but add a level teaspoon of general purpose wine yeast. You'll still have all the other beasties there but the yeast you've added, as it's there in greater numbers and is much more efficient, swamps them and starves them of oxygen.

The yeast addition turns a hitty-missy procedure into a 95% certainty. Maybe I'm being a little pessimistic there, but you can never guarantee anything. Put it this way - In the past twenty years I've made some pretty awful wines, but none of them have been infected.

Mike

[devolutionary]

Thanks Mike. I'll put the word out.

[frozenthunderbolt]

First, Mike is right, but that said, we have never had a bad batch of EC made the natural way (just to be annoying) lol

[MKG]

I said none - you said never. Oh dear - We both know what's going to happen to the next batch, don't we?

Mike

[frozenthunderbolt]

With out a doubt!