I’ve been wanting to try some battonage on a wine kit for a while, since I first read about the technique.  Battonage basically involves leaving the wine on the fine lees for an extended period of time, and stirring the lees up every few days to extract additional amino acids and mannoproteins from the yeast.  The result is a “creamy” mouthfeel, which I like on occasion.  I decided to try this on a sauvignon blanc kit, since we really liked the basic sauv blanc kit from winexpert that I made last year.  Tim Vandergrift, the technical services manager for Winexpert, gave instructions for doing battonage on wine kits.  The kit is made up as instructed, up to the first racking step.  The fining and stabilizing step is delayed, and instead a quarter teaspoon of Kmeta is added to the wine.  The wine is then stirred up with a spoon so that all of the yeast sediment is put into suspension and the wine becomes cloudy.  The wine is stirred every 3 or 4 days for a total of 4 weeks.  Then the wine is allowed to settle for another 2 weeks, and racked off to a clean carboy.  Then the instructions are followed again, starting with stabilizing and clearing for my kit.  It will be very interesting to see if/how this treatment affects the wine.