Bottling Day

I’ve been collecting bottles for the past few months. After finishing the wine, the bottles are rinsed and then placed in a wine rack. However I am paranoid about cleaning the wine bottles. After retrieving the bottles from the wine cellar, I placed them in the dishwasher and ran the SaniWash cycle. I did not use dishwashing detergent. Then I shot a solution of potassium metabisulphite into the bottles using the Avvinatore bottle rinser and sulifter (Is that a word?). Then the bottles were placed on a bottle tree. Much easier than what I formally did by pouring the potassium metabisulphite into a bottle, then from one bottle to another and so forth. I then placed the bottles on the racks in the dishwasher. Now we have made progress!

We bottled two wines, the Cabernet Sauvignon/Tannat blend and five bottles of Zinfandel that I rescued from a press as we were breaking it down and cleaning it. I was going to use the pomace for wine jelly but I ended up with a gallon of wine after filtering it through tripled layered cheesecloth.  I thought that a gallon would make too much jelly so I placed it in a gallon carboy.  I added a French oak spiral and let it sit and age for a couple weeks. After that I removed the spiral and let the wine do its thing in a gallon carboy for nine months.

It took Kathy and me about two hours cleaning and sanitizing things, bottling 35 bottles and cleaning up. I recalled the first time I bottled wine. It took four of us four hours to bottle 29 bottles. Again on with the progress!

Cheers,
Terry