I am much in agreement with Yair Margalit. That unfiltered wines are inherently "better" is nothig more than a myth. Indeed a myth that allows some wineries to charge a good deal more for wines labeled as "unfiltered".

Those wanting more details on this can see the intelligent article at http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=columns_article&conten...

Best
Rogov

Really interesting to get Yair's view of this. One of the things that is interesting to me about this is I just read Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route(http://www.mykerem.com/articles/book-review-adventures-wine-route-kermit...), and he is so adamantly against filtration in the book, he suggests it can make a wine go from great to insipid. Especially the sterile filtering would appall Lynch.

Interesting to have two different view points, I don't favor one over the other at this point, except I have tasted one of Yair's wines and it was outstanding so I would have to give him the advantage : )

Although one question I have is he says filtration has no impact, so why does he choose to do only the coarsest filtering, might there be some benefit to light filtering?

To filter a wine is a necessary practice of wine making – everybody does it. Nobody wants to find a small creature in his bottled wine. The question is: what is the filter density, sterile filter to coarse filter. A sterile wine filter will remove all yeasts and bacteria that may cause sediment and possibly refermentation – very impotent in most of the white wines and to be on the safe side it is a common practice in commercial wineries for all wines reds and whites. The disadvantage of filtering is the possible (?) reduction of color and tannins. Yes, some color molecules and tannins are bond to the filter, but in my opinion it is insignificant. The smallest size of the pores of the filter are 0.45 micron, it is designed to prevent the microorganism ( microorganism size is 0.50 micron ) . The size of the color molecules and tannins is 100 times smaller, so the filter is not preventing those and/or most other molecules to pass through. In some big wineries how has lots of wine to filter, they use most of the time a prefilter ( mechanical separators ) machines like kieselguhr light soil consisting of siliceous diatom remains which in one hand filter roughly and on the other hand bond color, smell and taste molecules in considerable numbers which effect the quality of the wine. Then they use the filter machine.

Asaf Margalit