You may have noticed some wine diamonds in our 2022 Riesling and thought they were glass shards or a flaw in the wine! Don’t panic, you’ve not found glass, you’ve found tartrate crystals or what winemakers sometimes term ‘wine diamonds’.
They don’t indicate that the wine is spoiled. Quite the opposite, in fact. Those harmless, tasteless jewels are called “wine diamonds,” and not because of their crystalline looks.
Wine diamonds are considered a sign of quality, at least in the eyes of some sommeliers and wine makers who say their presence indicates that a wine hasn’t been over-processed.
Wine diamonds aren’t diamonds, of course. They’re bits of potassium bitartrate — also referred to as potassium hydrogen tartrate or tartaric acid — and are a by-product of winemaking. Wine diamonds form during the fermentation process in either the bottles or in winery tanks when wine is stored at temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius.
[Read more…] about Wine Diamonds explained.