Blackberry wine - yeasty taste/smell

Hillybilly4

Opened a bottle of last year's (Sept 2017) blackberry wine last night and it has a really yeasty smell and taste. Undrinkable. Never had this problem before!
Any ideas please folks as to the possible cause?

basskebab

Did you rack the wine when it was conditioning? Also did you use campden tablets?
Made a plum wine earlier this year for the first time and when reading about it these were 2 steps that would help get rid of yeasty/sulphery smells.

I'd suggest adding a campden tablet and leaving for a week or so to see if it takes the smell away but your wine is already in bottles and that might not be practical.


Useful article here on some possible causes -
https://blog.eckraus.com/yeasty-smell-in-wine

Hillybilly4

Thanks for that link.
I definitely racked the wine. I never use campden tablets.
I reckon, from that article, that the yeast might have been past its best.

basskebab

no worries, glad to help. I've had stuck beer fermentations before using old yeast so have got into the habit of chucking yeast that goes past it's sell by date.