Chitosan is a product derived from chitin which is derived from sources like the shells of shrimp or crabs. Kieselsol is negatively charged and causes the positively charged particles such as yeast, proteins and haze causing compounds to bind together and sink to the bottom.Īfter 24 hours of adding Kieselsol to a wine, chitosan is added. Kieselsol is a product derived from silicon dioxide or silica that comes in a liquid form that can be dosed into the wine. These two finings are commonly sold together because of the way they interact. Used alongside metabisulfites it does a really effective job of stabilising wines and is essential when you want to back sweeten wines by adding sugar back in before bottling otherwise this sugar will ferment out after packaging. It acts as an inhibitor of yeast growth and is added to the wine before bottling to prevent the wine from refermenting in the bottle. Potassium sorbate might also be labelled as a wine stabiliser. These chemical are widely used in the commercial wine industry which is why wine labels will state the wine contains sulfities. The chemical breaks down into sulphur dioxide which is an antioxidant so metabisulfites will also scrub excess oxygen from wine. Metabisulfites are used in wine making to sanitise fruits and wine musts as well as equipment. Both chemicals do exactly the same thing but leave either a residual amount of either sodium or potassium. Wine Sulfites & Stabilizing AdditivesĬampden tablets are pills made from sodium or potassium metabisulfite. This group of additives, of which there is a whole array of types and their usage and timings of use may be different are used to speedily and really efficiently clear wines. Let’s start off with the first group I just mentioned finings. This is the trade-off between using additives and not using them. It will take a lot longer to make a clear wine and there is some chance it may not be quite so crystal clear. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make clear wine without finings, you most definitely can. Where they do help is they make things more efficient and faster than maybe they would otherwise be.įor instance, wine finings is a whole group of additives that will help clear wine and they work very quickly, usually in the space of a few days. In fact, some would say you can make better wine without the chemicals.