Does wine react with silver?

Hello Everyone,

Perhaps its an ignorant question: I had never really thought about it before, but a lot of wine accessories, particularly those in the antique style, are made of silver - funnels, tastevins, etc. Silver obviously reacts with air relatively rapidly (i.e., oxidation). So, does wine react with silver?

Thanks,
Ryan

As far as I know silver will react with some sulfer compounds in wine, e.g. H2S to form silver sulfide, and has been used to aid in removal of those compounds (more usually it's copper). I'm not aware of any other significant reaction that silver would have with anything in wine.

Regards,

John

Ryan, Hi......


Silver, gold and pewter all react with wine but that is not a cause of health concern, for no significant amount of the metal will leach into the wine until in contact for a minimum of 2 - 3 hours, and that whether in a wine glass or a decanter. The problem that comes about in drinking wine from silver, gold or pewter goblets is that the lip and saliva indeed come in contact with the metal and that passes on an undesired metallic taste to the wine.

As to using a silver funnel for pouring or decanting - should be no problem whatever. Oh yes...in case you are thinking of using lead decanters for wine - avoid unless you want to suffer the fate of a great many of the noblest of the Romans.

Best
Rogov

Like John said silver, copper and gold can react with sulfur compounds found in wine. Introducing certain metals to wine can also alter a wine’s redox potential, by acting as a catalyst for certain chemical reactions.

Salute

I'd think the acidity of wine will also attack silver. But these effects probably pale when compared to the tarnishing effects of the air.

-Paul W.

Thanks everyone. The spirit of my question was rather, would and potential reactions with silver harm the wine? Mark! Surely you can shed light on this?

How big of a silver object (bar) are we talking about, what volume of “treated” wine are we talking about, and how long of a duration?
Like Daniel said, if your taking about a silver funnel, wine key, silver spoon, or silver coin, and the wine is only in contact with the object for a short period of time there shouldn’t be a health problem, and yes a wine that was once “unpleasant” could possible become “pleasant”.

Salute

Thanks everyone. The spirit of my question was rather, would and potential reactions with silver harm the wine? Mark! Surely you can shed light on this?

I certainly wouldn't store wine in silver. Prolonged contact will lead to several different reactions, none of which are likely very good for the wine. First of all, since the surface of silver is silver oxide (unless it's been recently treated), you have a reaction between the acids in the wine with the silver oxide to form silver tartrate or silver malate/lactate. Those same salts, in turn, can react with any aldehydes or sugars present in the wine to form silver(0) again (the Tollens test) which will fall out of solution as a disperse black powder and promote oxidation to acetic acid and sugar lactones. None of this presents any human health hazard that I'm aware of, but could change the taste of the wine and detract from the appearance.

Mark Lipton

I had to look up aldehyde, but found something amusing in the process: the root word from which vinyl is derived is . . . . . wine!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldehyde