Grapewine without so2

[u/Top_Fermenting]

Any tips?

[u/Similar-Ad-3454]

Leader winemaker here. If you gona drink it fast (1 year) go for it, be clean, really really clean, if you kniw how to do it. Other cases, disregard chtgpt

[u/veengineer]

Are you pitching yeast? If so, a healthy yeast starter will help outcompete other microbes. I’d pitch a starter, then add nutrients a day or two later. Just make sure there’s not left over nutrients, pitch MLB, and allow functionally zero head space. 

And of course, clean and sanitize with an actual sanitizer, like StarSan. 

[u/DryTerm1611]

Just don't use it and let it run it's course. It takes Longer but that's the only downside.

[u/Lapidariest]

Don't... Bit you do you.  You can try low So2 but you will eventually have vinegar with no So2.   It prevents spoilage.  You can try grapes and yeast that are high in natural So2 so it's produced but not added and then make sure you have extra acid to make the PH unwelcoming to bacteria and mold but it is still gonna eventually spoil if you don't drink it fast. 

[u/Just-Sign-5394]

If you’re incredibly talented - sure. But if you’re not Bernard Noblet, Lalou Bize, Emmanuel Reynaud, or JY Bizot…. Wouldn’t try it unless you were just experimenting

[u/Aligotegozaimasu → u/Just-Sign-5394]

As far as I know, none of these are known for zero sulfur.

[u/Just-Sign-5394 → u/Aligotegozaimasu]

Sorry I should’ve been more specific in my comment. These winemakers have often played with the idea of no sulphur, in the sense that their talent has allowed them to reduce it down to the closest without allowing error, almost like using it as a lifeline rather than systematic usage. Bizot however has made numerous zero sulphur bottlings since 98’.

[u/27thr0waway856]

This is a pretty wild thread, I am no master winemaker but I 5 vintages in and never have used so2. Have I lost some batches to the drain, yeah, but like less than 10%.

[u/ExaminationFancy]

No SO2 wines don’t age well. Drink up!

[u/Top_Fermenting → u/ExaminationFancy]

No problem!

[u/veengineer → u/ExaminationFancy]

There are SO2 wines that can age well, but not many, and they’re probably not low intervention either. 

[u/Bright_Storage8514]

I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of tips that matched the energy of someone asking for help simply by saying “any tips?”

A groundbreaking collection of winemaking tips that absolutely nobody needed

1. Start with grapes. This is generally considered helpful. While it is technically possible to make wine from other things, grapes have been doing most of the heavy lifting for thousands of years.
2. Wash your equipment. Dirt is not a secret ingredient. Neither is last year’s mysterious sludge.
3. Sanitize everything. Yes, even that thing you’re thinking about skipping. Especially that thing.
4. Use clean water. Water quality matters. “It came out of the hose” is not a comprehensive water-treatment strategy.
5. Measure your ingredients. Winemaking is not improved by randomly dumping things into a bucket and declaring yourself an artist.
6. Know how much sugar you added. “Some” is not a measurement recognized by most winemaking instruments.
7. Check the gravity. Hydrometers are remarkably useful for determining whether fermentation is actually doing what you think it is doing.
8. Yeast needs food. Apparently, yeast also appreciates proper nutrition. Who could have predicted this shocking biological development?
9. Give fermentation time. Yeast does not become more cooperative because you stared at the airlock for twenty minutes.
10. Do not panic because the airlock stopped bubbling. Bubbling is not a legally binding declaration of fermentation status.
11. Do not panic because the airlock is bubbling. It is also not a legally binding declaration that everything is perfect.
12. Keep the fermentation vessel covered appropriately. You want fermentation, not an all-inclusive resort for fruit flies.
13. Temperature matters. Yeast, like nearly every other living organism, has preferences.
14. Different yeasts behave differently. Wine yeast varieties are not merely different fonts on the same microorganism.
15. Taste your wine. This is somehow still useful despite centuries of technological advancement.
16. Don’t taste it every five minutes. You are monitoring fermentation, not conducting a hostage negotiation with the carboy.
17. Let the wine settle. Gravity remains remarkably reliable.
18. Racking is not a race. Moving wine around unnecessarily does not earn bonus points.
19. Try not to splash fermented wine around unnecessarily. Oxygen is useful in some circumstances and distinctly less welcome in others. Winemaking is complicated enough without deliberately inviting oxidation to the party.
20. Keep the wine topped up when appropriate. Headspace is not automatically your friend.
21. Don’t assume every cloudy wine is ruined. Sometimes wine is simply… cloudy.
22. Don’t assume every clear wine is excellent. Congratulations, you have discovered that appearance and quality are not identical concepts.
23. Lees exist. They are not evidence that your wine has developed a sediment-based personality disorder.
24. Bottling is not the same thing as finishing. Putting wine in a bottle does not magically cause it to become better wine.
25. Use bottles that can actually hold wine. This sounds obvious because it is.
26. Use appropriate closures. The objective is generally to keep the wine in the bottle rather than slowly introducing the outside world to it.
27. Label your bottles. “Red thing, probably from April” is not an ideal cellar-management system.
28. Write down what you did. Future You would like to know what Past You was thinking.
29. Do not trust Future You to remember. Future You is a liar.
30. Keep records of starting gravity and final gravity. Numbers are useful because memory is surprisingly bad at remembering numbers.
31. Don’t assume more sugar automatically means better wine. Otherwise every winery would simply be operating a candy factory with corks.
32. Don’t assume more oak automatically means better wine. Eventually you’re just drinking a tree with excellent branding.
33. Don’t add something merely because somebody on the internet said it worked once. “A guy in a forum did this in 2009” is not exactly a controlled trial.
34. Read the instructions on your additives. The tiny piece of paper you immediately threw away was apparently trying to help.
35. Don’t confuse “natural” with “immune to spoilage.” Microorganisms have been around considerably longer than your philosophical position on them.
36. Don’t confuse “homemade” with “immune to chemistry.” Chemistry has unfortunately refused to respect personal preferences.
37. Keep unwanted microorganisms out. Yeast is invited. Everyone else needs to RSVP.
38. Be patient. Wine has been making people wait for thousands of years. It is not going to start respecting your schedule now.
39. Don’t open every bottle early just to see whether it’s ready. At some point, you are no longer aging wine. You are conducting a very expensive longitudinal study with an inadequate sample size.
40. If something smells or tastes obviously wrong, investigate. “Maybe that’s just terroir” should not be your universal emergency response.
41. Don’t blindly follow a recipe. A recipe is a starting point, not a substitute for knowing what is happening.
42. Don’t blindly ignore a recipe either. There is a difference between improvisation and repeatedly pressing random buttons.
43. Understand your equipment before using it. This includes reading the manual, despite the manual’s shocking lack of entertainment value.
44. Keep your workspace organized. Losing the hydrometer while making wine is an excellent way to discover new vocabulary.
45. Don’t put dirty equipment away and call it tomorrow’s problem. Tomorrow has enough problems.
46. Don’t assume every batch will behave identically. Grapes are biological products, not factory-issued USB cables.
47. Record failures too. “We don’t talk about the 2026 batch” is not a particularly useful scientific record.
48. Taste critically. “I made it, therefore it is good” is emotionally supportive but scientifically questionable.
49. Don’t drink your entire experimental batch before writing down what you changed. This is particularly important if you intend to reproduce the experiment.
50. Finally, remember the golden rule of winemaking: If you sanitize your equipment, measure things, control what you can, take notes, and exercise patience, you will have successfully rediscovered approximately 90% of the advice everyone has been giving home winemakers since approximately forever.

Congratulations. You’re now ready to make wine. Please try not to invent a new kind of vinegar.

[u/Sugary_Plumbs → u/Bright_Storage8514]

I'm confused, you know ChatGPT is a waste of time but you're still pasting a wall of useless text here? OP pointedly came to ask humans for help instead of an LLM.

[u/zero_dr00l → u/Sugary_Plumbs]

They're making a cheeky point about the exceedingly low level of effort OP put in.

And I get that. It's a totally shit post.

[u/Bright_Storage8514 → u/zero_dr00l]

Thank you. Knowing my snark was understood makes the downvotes worth it lol

[u/Top_Fermenting]

mould?

[u/zero_dr00l → u/Top_Fermenting]

I mean yeah SO2 does a lot of good things and you won't have any of that protection...