Winery Task: Rebottling Wine

Twice this year we’ve come across a winery that had cases of bottled wine that had a buildup of CO₂ in some of the bottles. At a Texas winery there were only a few bottles detected, however the winemaker didn’t want to take any chances and decided to open all the bottles, dump the wine into a tank and rebottle. This same technique was also used at Tin Lizzie Wineworks and we helped with the process that was rather quick.

I for one like a little fizz in my wine, just enough effervescence to tickle the tongue. But others do not especially if it is unexpected. So we tackled several cases of wine that may have had a CO₂ build-up. Some of the bottles had some CO₂ while others did not, but it was decided to dump the entire batch and rebottle. The process went quickly: sanitize the top of the bottle, remove the cork, pour the contents into a stainless steel barrel (this allows the CO₂ to escape), sanitize the inside of the bottle and place on a bottle tree to dry.

We left before rebottling took place. I wonder how often this occurs at wineries. With small batches of wine it doesn’t seem to be an issue. However with large volumns of wine at large wineries, a million bottles or so would certainly challenge arms and wrists.