Some of these are big words, but don’t let it scare you. Lubanzi wines are all made with minimal intervention. In essence, we like to set the grapes down the right track and then let them do their thing. To make the magic work, we use a few simple additives, all of which are naturally occurring and 100% vegan.
Celstab
Celstab is derived from plant fiber, and helps stabilize the wines. It prevents tartrate salt precipitation–which would result in small crystals forming in the wine if it gets too cold. If you freeze wine, you might see small, harmless, shard-like crystals form. These are called tartrate crystals. They’re harmless, but can be unpleasant to swallow so we try our best to keep them from happening.
Citrogum
Citrogum is another vegetable fiber that stabilizes the wine by preventing the precipitation of colloids, pigments, and tartrates. We’re mainly looking to keep the wine clear of those crystals we mentioned though.
Lafase XL Extraction
Lafase XL Extraction is a type of enzyme. It helps grapes steep in fermentation (think like Tea!) so we get the max juice from the grapes we harvested. Since all our grapes are hand-picked & we work with a smaller quantity (but higher quality) harvest, we try to make the most of it.
Neosolfosol C
Neosolfosol is an aqueous solution of Ammonium bisulfite which serves as food for the yeast. Yeast loves NH4 (it eats Nitrogen!) to produce Alcohol (Chemistry, right?) Neosolfosol provides that and, at the same time, is also works as an antioxidant—preventing the juice from oxidizing (that means going bad). Our wines also contain SO2—which also prevents the wine from oxidizing. Sulfites are currently treated with a great deal of skepticism. Although up to date it's the only antioxidant and antimicrobial in - one! So it's actually a big deal in wine and if you want to preserve your wine in the bottle and hang onto those beautiful aromas - then SO2 will help a long way! Even with added SO2, wines clock in with substantially less sulfites than a lot of foods (like 1/100th of the sulfites found in deli meat, dried fruit, and frozen shrimp).
Polymust (we use the rose and V varieties) is a color stabilizer in white and rosés. It's a vegetable protein derived from peas (gotta love Peas!) that helps prevent oxidation, which would alter the color of the wine. Many wines used animal based proteins (like egg white and fish guts) for the same reason, but we keep things 100% vegan in this house.
Polymust
Vitiben
This one is just for beauty! We all like to look good on the shelf, you know? Vitiben is a form of bentonite—which is basically powdered clay. It's added once wine is in the tank and about to go to bottle. It binds with unstable proteins in the wine which can cause haziness if not removed. If you were to pound rocks and toss the dust into the wine, you’d have essentially the same effect.
Question, comments? Give us a shout hello@capeventurewine.com