So, if wine freezes would the sugars precipitate separate from the water?

[HereSince1628]

Its a cheap French Beaujoulais that I think is ok, with about 12% EtOH...

In the winter I keep the regularly used table wine in the old milk delivery box. Its little pass through from outside into kitchen. I opened the door this afternoon an this wine had frozen overnight, although the American stuff with 13% EtOH hadn't.

In freezing it had popped its cork, so it's time to thaw it out and have some afternoon wine...and after a glass the wierd thing is I see sediment in the glass, LOTS of sediment. So, being curious I stuck my finger into it and taste it. It's sweet...it seems to be sugar. Anyone have an idea what the heck happened?

[BrotherBuzz]

1. I thought that cheap French wine contained antifreeze?

Something is wrong....:shrug:

[bucknaked]

3. ahem... don't you mean cheap "freedom" wine?

sorry, couldn't help it. :p

[BrotherBuzz]

5. I stand corrected

[goddess40]

2. Interesting question

We has some Australian white wine freeze last night and pop the cork too.

[HereSince1628]

9. Using the porch or some like thing for natural refrigeration?.

[goddess40]

15. You guessed it - It's our winter cooler

Since I don't drink wine I forgot about it, I remember my soda in the garage but not the wine on the porch. The porch gets much colder than the garage - so my soda was fine. They drank the wine anyway with no ill effects.

[RebelOne]

4. First time I have ever heard of wine freezing.

[HereSince1628]

7. I never had it happen before, I've kept wine there in the winter over

several years. But then we haven't had a lot of below zero temps.

[oneighty]

6. You forced me to Google

Quite a bit of information concerning freezing wine. It can be done during 'making' excess tartrates will precipitate.

Cool. What is a tartrate? Sugar is mentioned too. Boy a lot of information concerning making wine. Sure to find an answer there.

180

[HereSince1628]

8. I'm clueless on tartrates too, but I followed you to google..

Based on that I read I'm guessing that's what I saw.

[oneighty]

10. If a liquid

is over saturated with (sugar) it will have some settling of the solid sugar. I think the colder the fluid the less solid it can hold.

An interesting question. One that might get good informed answers in the 'Science' forum. Try there.

180

[NYC]

14. Tartrates.

Cream of tartar (a white powder) is made from grape skins or grape skin residue. That's all I know.

http://www.answers.com/tartrates&r=67
Tartrate crystals These harmless crystals, a by-product of tartaric acid, are possibly alarming to consumers who might mistake them for shards of glass. As a result, winemakers often try to control them through a stabilization process.

Picture of deposit of tartrates on a cork:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.diwinetaste.com/dwt/en2002116.php&h=355&w=360&sz=17&tbnid=MiMK-rIUeInxRM:&tbnh=115&tbnw=117&hl=en&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtartrates%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

[benburch]

11. You can deliberately freeze wine to concentrate the ETOH

The liquid fraction that remains when the mass of the wine freezes is fairly concentrated.

Indeed, before the invention of distilling, this was the only way it could be done.

[Kali]

12. yuck - better marinate some meat or make a big batch of

spaghetti - bleh alcohol abuse

[EstimatedProphet]

13. Freeze distillation

Freezing will concentrate the alcohol as it seperates from the water and solids. The resulting brandy will be somewhere around 30% alcohol-it's far from pure after a normal freeze.