Archive for the 'Funnels' Category

Have you ever taken a nice, white wine out of your cellar and as you reached the bottom of the bottle, noticed there were crystals floating in it? These are tartrate crystals. They are formed when the tartaric acid in your wine combines with the potassium (also found naturally in wine, another one of wine’s many health benefits) under very cold temperature conditions forming the salt, potassium bitartrate. If you’ve ever used cream of tartar in cooking or baking, it is the same substance pulverized into a powder. In fact, these crystals scrapped off of wine barrels are the source for the cream of tartar you buy in the supermarket. Tartrates can be found in red wines as well, but they are more often found mingling with the sediment, and are normally decanted out.

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