[Review] Winebuddy Sauvignon Blanc

[Drzava]

Second full size white wine kit for me - a relative cheapie (€30 - €35 depending on vendor) with a very good reputation on the UK homebrew forum. Just a litre of concentrate to which you add 4kg of sugar and water. Initially made it up to 20L (rather than 23L) as many people recommend with wine kits. This gave me a gravity of 1.100 which I reckoned to be a bit on the high side for comfort, so I added another litre, giving an OG of 1.09. Surprisingly for a cheap kit, it includes a sachet of oak chips, as well as yeast / nutrient. It's a 7 day kit but of course that was optimistic. Fermentation was fierce after 24 hours, but took 11 days to settle at a low FG of 0.988. I racked onto stabiliser and added flavouring and finings as per the instructions. Gave it a few days but the wine didn't clear very well (I also had this problem with a previous kit - maybe my degassing sucks?). Bottled anyway after adding half a litre of water to lower the alcohol a bit. Given some time in the bottle it clears well and is a lovely pale colour. However, even with decanting, some of the crap gets into the glass. Taste is a bit "hmmm" - tastes a bit sweet and artificial to me with rather a lingering solvent taste (!). Her indoors likes it though (I don't drink white generally), and has drank the lot! If doing again, I'd make it to 22L and add extra finings and bulk age / rack it for a month or two.