Kingmorack

M any enthusiast wine-makers are puzzled by the idea of racking wine. Some of them tend to confuse it with sealing up the fermentation vessels or with the process of bottling the wine. However, this is not what racking wine is and a limited understanding of the latter can have a disastrous effect on the end product. Actually, racking (siphoning or filtering) wine is a specific procedure through which the liquid is decanted, anywhere from 2 to 4 times, during the fermentation process. Why Is It Necessary to Rack Wine? Also referred to as soutirage after the French word for the procedure, filtering was initially developed during the 19th century in the Bordeaux region as a way to effectively remove the yeast, as well as other sediments, from wine. For this purpose, a racking hose is used to draw out the liquid from one container and gently pour it into another without disturbing the deposits at the bottom. Instead of an electric pump, the procedure relies on gravity, because this i...