Sediment Questions

[Triple H]

I know some wines are bottled unfiltered and unfined and this results in a wine with sediment even at a young age, but eventually over time, won’t all wines develop sediment? How long before sediment starts to appear, and…where the heck does it come from?

[Thomas]

There is no precise answer to which wines will cast off sediment and when.

Put simply, sediment is the stuff of the earth that remains in solution when bottling the wine and then, over time, finds its way out of solution.

[Innkeeper]

Sediment is rarely found in ready to consume wines these days. When it does, don't look on it as a deficiency. In addition to what Foodie covered, in long term aging wines, some of the sediment is a byproduct of the smoothing out of the tannin. Tannin can be vicious in such wines when they are young.