Bulk Storage (Day 110 - 115 to Day 200 or beyond)
You are almost done. In fact you have now completed all the hard work that is required for making your wine. Now it is time to sit back and let your wine relax and become more complex by allowing it to mingle with itself for a little while.
Not everyone uses this phase and just skips right to bottling their wine, however, I feel adding this step in will make for a much better, smoother wine in the end. Think of this step as a better way of aging you wine. By allowing your wine to age in bulk it will have more ‘stuff’ to work with to become silky and balanced.
Depending on what type of wine you are making (White, Red, or Fruit) will decide for how long you should keep your wine in bulk storage. If you are making a white wine or a fruit wine you don’t need to bulk age it that long. (1-3 months should do the trick). If you are making red wine (especially a full bodied red wine) you will want to bulk age it for much longer. (3 months – 1 or 2 years)
If you are using barrels to bulk age your wine and you want to age it for a long time (1-2 years) make sure you have enough potassium metabisulphate added and keep an eye on it as it will need constant topping up because of evaporation.
When bulk aging your wine, try to keep it in a cool, dry, dark place. (This is also the type of environment you want to keep your finished bottled wine in later).
After you have waited (and likely almost forgotten about your wine) and you are happy with how it tastes (yes, go taste it! Make sure you are happy with it. If it is still too sharp, give it another month or two) it is now time to move on to the final step. Bottling.