Home › Wines, Champagne and Doctoring › To Fine Port Wine
To Fine Port Wine
To fine Madeira or any kind of Wine with Isinglass.
To fine 40 gallons wine, steep 1 ounce isinglass in 1 pint of pure cold water over night, and then melt it over a gentle charcoal fire, until a uniform gelatinous mass is formed. When cool mix with it 3 pints of wine, and let it repose 12 hours in a moderately warm room. Then add 1 gallon of wine and mix the whole in a wooden vessel; whisk it with a clean broom until it foams up. Pour this mixture gradually in the wine you desire to fine, being careful to stir the whole continually during the process. Bung up the cask, and in the course of 48 hours the wine will appear perfectly clear and bright. Isinglass prepared in this way will precipitate perfectly, and leave no particles suspended in the wine.
To fine White or Red Wine with Eggs.
WHITE WINE.- To fine 60 gallons white wine, take the whites of 5 or 6 fresh eggs, 1 egg-shell nearly reduced to powder, and a small handful of common salt. Beat the whole together in a little of the wine, with a small clean broom, until it foams, then pour it into the wine gradually, constantly stirring it all the while. RED WINE is clarified in the same way. When you have Roussillon, or the dark wines called vin du midi, which are usually of a deep color, and wish to make it of a lighter color, add 5 or 6 eggs, yellows, whites, and shells together, with a small handful of salt.
To fine a Pipe of Port Wine.
Take the whites and shells of ten good eggs, and beat them up to a froth in a wooden bucket; add one gallon of Port and whisk it well up to a froth with a clean broom; draw off 4 gallons, and put the finings in it, stir
These are cellar operations rather than kitchen ones: clarifying bulk wine by dropping a protein through it so that suspended solids bind to it and settle. The instructions assume casks, a cellar and a wine that will be racked off the lees afterwards, which the excerpt breaks off before mentioning.
- The hinge: the wine must be racked afterwardsFining does not remove anything by itself; it only makes the haze heavy enough to fall. The clear wine has to be drawn off the sediment within days of settling, or the compacted lees will be stirred back in at the first movement of the cask.
- A pipe of portA pipe is the traditional Douro cask, generally reckoned at about 534 litres - roughly 117 imperial or 141 US gallons - though the figure varied by trade and port. Ten eggs to a pipe works out at about one egg per 14 gallons, a comparable rate to the 5 or 6 whites to 60 gallons given for white wine here.
- IsinglassDried collagen from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in sheets or shreds and still used for fining, particularly for white wines and cask beer. It is not gelatine and not agar; modern equivalents come as pre-prepared liquid dispersions dosed in grams per hectolitre.
- "A gentle charcoal fire"The point of the wording is low heat. Collagen begins to break down well before boiling, and isinglass that has been overheated loses its fining power and can leave a permanent haze. Warm it only until the swollen mass goes smooth and pourable.
- The clean broomA besom of stripped twigs, used as a bulk whisk in cellar work. The aim is to beat the egg white or isinglass to a stable foam so it disperses through the whole cask rather than sinking as a lump; a large balloon whisk or a paddle does the same job.
- Egg shells and saltThe powdered shell is usually explained as a weighting agent to help the albumen drop, and the salt as an aid to coagulation, though neither mechanism is firmly established. At these dilutions neither has much effect on flavour.
- Yolks for colourThe whole-egg treatment for Roussillon and other vins du midi is a colour-stripping trick: the text says plainly that it is for when you wish to make a deep-coloured wine lighter. Yolk lipids are usually credited with carrying down more pigment than white alone, though the mechanism is not certain.
- Allergen declarationEgg fining residues must be declared under EU and comparable labelling rules where they may remain; isinglass is exempted from that requirement in some jurisdictions, including the EU. Neither method is suitable for a vegan wine.
- Dose and temperatureOne ounce of isinglass to 40 gallons is heavier than modern practice, which works in the region of a few grams per hectolitre. Fining also works best in a cool cellar, not the "moderately warm room" specified, which is intended only for the preliminary standing of the diluted gel.
Books of this kind sat somewhere between a cellarman's manual and a manual of fraud. Fining itself is old and entirely legitimate, and both agents here remain in use. Egg-white fining is often said to belong to the Bordeaux and Douro cellars, where whisked whites were dropped into cask to soften tannin as well as to clear the wine, and isinglass, imported chiefly from Russia and long the finest of fish glues, was the standard choice for wines wanted bright rather than merely clean. What marks the passage as a trade text rather than a wine book is the final instruction about the vins du midi: fining is offered not to clarify the wine but to lighten the colour of a cheap dark southern red.