Our Commitment
Woods Bay Winery is a small certified craft winery, committed to producing only the finest wine with grapes grown in the optimum regions.
We do not believe in using commercial chemicals in our wines to preserve them as the big wineries do. We have gone back to the way wine was made in the Old World using only small amounts of natural clarifiers as well as natural stabilizers and preservatives.
Quality
Bottled by Woods Bay Bottling Company using the strictest sanitizing methods to ensure quality as well as natural solid corks to provide longevity of our wines since we do not use large amounts of sulfites to preserve our wines. Even our conveyor belts are naturally sanitized. We age our wine in old oak barrels that we have completely reconditioned and toasted the way it was done centuries ago.
Clarity
Most of us expect that when we pour a glass of wine it will be clear and bright. Unfortunately, when a fine wine finishes fermenting, it is far from so. It is cloudy and hazy with suspended particles of yeast cells, grape pulp, skins and stems, tartrates and colloids (tannins, proteins and phenolic particles). To render wine clear and free, it is clarified. Most wines, if left long enough, will self-clarify by gravity and the particles that fall to the bottom can be siphoned off. However, in the interests of efficiency, most winemakers help the process along by using a variety of aids such as fining agents.
Natural
One fining agent used to clarify red wine is egg whites. Egg whites are particularly good for removing tannin particles, especially green or harsh tannins, rendering the wine more round and soft.
Used for generations in the Old World to clear red wines during barrel aging, egg whites and egg shells contain a water soluble protein called albumen and has a reputation of softening astringency and mellowing wine with no negative residue or effects.
We at Woods Bay Winery prefer this method over chemical or unnatural clarifiers.
