Wine Focus: April - Everything’s Fine

[David M. Bueker]

Remember the good old days of Robert Parker railing about fining and filtering as if the fate of the universe depended on banishing the practices from wineries around the globe?

Does anyone even talk about fining and filtering anymore? I know that wineries, and not just industrial ones, still use the practices, but you never hear anything about them.

Have any opinions on the practices? Willing to divulge a wine you like that is fined or filtered, or God forbid…both?

Back in the early Parker period fining and filtering was an issue when selling wine to the casual consumer. Many of them confused tartrate crystals with contamination with sand or glass and thought that there was something wrong with a wine throwing a sediment. I've talked to many wine shop proprietors who experienced consumers returning wines because of these perceived "faults".

Fining and filtering have never really figured into my wine buying decisions. I'm a bottom-line guy--I look at the final product. I don't really care how the producer got there. That being said, I do observe that over half of the reds that I drink throw a considerable sediment.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

At least half the white wines (and even a few reds) I drink have “wine diamonds.”