wine First aged chinese rice wine success

Usually trying to age rice wine makes it turn really sour. Well i finally managed to get a small batch to age for 1 year and it didn't sour. Its dry as a bone with a kick to it. The initial ferment (cold) was Japanese koji and K1V-1116 yeast iirc. I will have to check my notes to be sure. After 20 days it was strained and put in a secondary. Most of it i cold crashed and bottled long ago but i saved a little over a quart for this experiment. I figured if it failed i would at least have some good vinegar.
 
I siphoned it off yesterday and put it in the fridge to cold crash but its really doesn't need it. The wine is very clear. Slightly golden in color. I only got back about 750ml as i was trying to avoid any sediment.
 
I may start a batch of red rice wine today using red yeast rice with a mix of jasmine and short grain rice.
 
The koji and/or red yeast rice converts the starch in the rice to sugar. I used just a little sugar in the yeast starter. I may have used rice syrup but i don't remember for sure. Ive made some pretty potent sweet rice wine this way before just using red yeast rice, steamed rice and Chinese yeast balls. All attempts before this turned sour using the yeast balls. They also contain flour so it sours easily like a bread starter. The wine needs to be fermented dry also so the lacto bacteria has nothing to eat.
 
They key though is cold fermentation. If kept between around 55F then the lacto bacteria has a tough time. Problem is you need a cold tolerant yeast too. Thats no biggie if you know what yeasts work under 60F.
 
I might try double fermentation sometime. Ferment with traditional methods and then pasteurize/filter. Take the filtered wine and ferment with a more aggressive yeast till dry. Its a lot of work and atm i don't have a filter that would work.
 
Here is a pic of the wine using koji i made before any aging. These were consumed already. :D
KojiWine2_zpsmq4badgy.jpg
 
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