When we think of a good wine, perhaps a nice red with a color that recalls complex aromas or a sparkling wine with subtle and persistent bubbles, the image that presents itself to us is very unlikely to be that of a “turbid” wine.

The clarification of wine, that is the process of eliminating all the particles that can make it cloudy, is an activity that has been practiced in a more or less rudimentary way since ancient times: in practice a “clarifying” substance is added which, by binding particles suspended in the wine, causes them to slowly precipitate to the bottom. Then a transfer is enough, and the game is done, even better if with the use of a filter to perfect the result.

The clarifying substances can be of vegetable or mineral origin but much more often animal (this is often the discriminant to identify a “Vegan” wine).

But is everything that makes wine “turbid” necessarily bad?

Not necessarily! And the same goes for the famous “bottom” or “shirt” (between bottom and shirt, the difference is the position of the sediments: in the case of the shirt, they will be on the walls of the bottle).

Especially in red wines, sediment can be synonymous with quality: they are very often tannins and anthocyanins that, due to the effect of time and the aging of the wine, have settled on the bottle.

Even the bubbles have some exceptions: this is the case of Prosecco “with a bottom”, where the sedimented yeasts are not removed and give a cloudy appearance to the wine.

A last very common aspect, which surely all wine lovers (especially white) have encountered at least once, is the presence of small clear crystals: nothing to be alarmed about! These are precipitations of tartaric acid, originating from significant changes in temperature.