The almost frantic activity of harvest, crush, and fermentation have past, so what comes next? The wine is resting in barrel but not quite ready to settle in for winter. The activity slows down drastically now that the wine is in barrel but there are still things happening to the young wine. The final few grams of sugar, if any sugar remains, are being consumed by the remaining yeast culture. And for all red wines, and many white wines, the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid by the introduction of a malic culture is underway.

Mike Z explains where we go from here.