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George Chang

11/30/2012

FPM

The Effects of Aging and Oxygen Exposure on Wine

Introduction:

Aging is a very important consideration of winemaking. From the purely business need

to hold onto wine longer and the qualitative properties that a wine might obtain through aging,

aging should always be managed carefully so as to produce the best product and to prevent

spoilage. In a business aspect, aging is unavoidable, seeing as there are many reasons why a

vintage might be held off from being sold for a while, an example is the need for the previous

years vintage to be mostly sold first, so as the newer vintage would not lower the demand for

the older vintage. In the wine making aspect the four goals of aging as stated by Boulton et al

1996 are subtraction of off flavors, addition of desirable flavors, carry over of varietal aromas,

and multiplication of the complexity. In this lab, we will be testing the effects of aging and

oxygen exposure and their sensory effects on different vintages. I hypothesize that a younger

vintage will develop less off notes and visual discrepancies compared to an older vintage when

oxidized.

Materials & Methods:

All materials and methods were followed according to the laboratory manual (Bisson,

2006) unless otherwise stated.

For this experiment the vintages that we were required to analyze were from: 1989,

1999, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012.

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Discussion:

During this lab, we used sensory evaluation to assess the qualities of the wines. The two

sensory components we tested for were the visual and the aromatic. In the first week, we

opened and smelled the wines when they were supposed to have not been left out, and as such,

there were not that many off notes, and besides the little browning of the edges of the two

oldest vintages, the

This is where you get to explain whether your results are consistent with the stuff you

found for your introduction. Also, this is your chance to explain why stuff happened. I would

rather you exercised all the whys, even if you don't know the right answer.

Did you consider sources of error?

Did you consider other microbial interactions?

In the case of my example, did you consider that your TAs are vastly overcommitted? orpossible started playing Mario Kart non-stop for the last 3 days? Maybe they started watching

a show on Netflix, got sick etc...There is no right answer, but when you bring this stuff up, it

shows us you understand the overall concept.

Be sure to answer your hypothesis. Did it happen as predicted? Yes? Awesome, was it

in agreement with the literature you found in your intro? No? Why? What happened?

Conclusion:

This is just a summary of what you found. No new information should be included. This is also

going to be a bit repetitive. Yes, you should conclude your findings, but that should havealready been in your discussion as well.

References:

-Bisson, L.F. 2006. VEN 124 Lab Manual. UC Davis, CA.

-Boulton, R.B., V.L. Singleton, L.F. Bisson, and R.E. Kunkee. 1996. Principles and Practices

of Winemaking. Chapman & Hall, New York.