Topic: Rhubarb wine fizzy!!!

[sueshamen]

Made rhubarb wine from frozen rhubarb last year using dry sugar extraction.
All went well, fermentation straight forward bottled in May this year and put in the wine rack in the cellar.
Went down to cellar saturday morning to get some demi johns and found one bottle had blown the cork (complete with foil cap). On loking at side of bottles saw cloudy deposit like yeast.
So we came to the conclusion it must still be working somehow.
Then the fun started.
All 8 bottles of the stuff back up to the kitchen. Demijohns sterilised, hubby is busy rinsing demis and says to me to take foil caps of. Yeah right !!! Off come the caps then..........6 corks pop out with the force of a launged rocket, this was great fun as between us we had 4 hands and 6 exploding bottles.
Managed to save most of the wine and got it into demis where it started glugging away like crazy.
Did sample a little bit and it's gorgeous, better than real champers.
But the question is what happened. We filtered the wine before it was bottled and it had definately stopped fermenting, could the recent hot weather have re-started it or have we accidently created Rhubarb Champagne.

[Travman]

Rhubarb champagne is very nice. If you set out to make out that way ;)
In your case it appears you did not stabilise your wine fully before bottling.Always double check fermentation as fully stopped and Always add 1tsp of potassium sorbate and 1 sodium metabisulphate (stabilising powder and campden tablet) before bottling to prevent "accidents".

[PurpleHeather]

It is called secondary fermentation, exactly what is used in the making of champagne.

I had the same thing with a pear wine years ago, it was a delicious accident which I have never been able to repeat. One cork blew a hole in my cupboard door though!

The addition of a camden tablet, one crushed into each bottle stops secondary fermentation.

Flying corks can be dangerous, which is why they put those little wire cages on to the tops of sparking wines. So, if you have any left store it somewhere very cold to stop the yeast working any further.