It's Bottling Time!

A month and a half ago, I began making this year's batch of wine. I talked about getting it started. Then I told you about primary and secondary fermentation. And most recently, I talked about getting it to stabilize and clear.

In my fourth and final winemaking post, I will talk about what was easily the most time-consuming, yet also the most fun stage of winemaking. It's bottling time!

Bring out the bottles!

When I bottled my two batches of wine in 2013, to be quite honest, I didn't do it properly. I cut several corners. I didn't want to take the time to do certain steps. And I didn't want to spend money on additional equipment. However, this time, I wanted to do it 100% right. No shortcuts or shortcomings.

GETTING THE BOTTLES READY
This began by doing the most non-glamorous thing throughout the entire process: Cleaning the Bottles.

I spent literally an entire afternoon cleaning 30 wine bottles. This started with a long soak using Oxiclean Free. The purpose of the soak was two-fold: 1)To clean the inside of the bottles, getting rid of any wine residue within the bottle. 2) To get the labels to come off the bottle. Some came right off, others required LOTS of scrubbing.

Removing the labels is something I failed to do last year, and quite frankly, it looked incredibly tacky. So I'm quite glad that I took the extra time to do this in Year Two.

You'd think that I'd be ready for the wine at this point... WRONG! I was strongly advised to sanitize the inside of each bottle. I'll be honest, I did not do this last year either. No one got sick from my wine, so I guess it was okay. But like I said earlier, I wanted to do this 100% right this time. So I mixed up some Starsans solution and let it do it's thing.

You can see the "foam" still in the bottles after pouring out
the solution. That's apparently a good thing!

I left it in the bottle for about five minutes.

The wine is so clear!

TRANSFERRING THE WINE
Okay, enough with the boring stuff about cleaning bottles. I know that's not why you're reading this. Let's get to the good stuff. Here is a picture of how my wine looked before making the transfer to bottles. Look how clear it is! It's an incredible transformation from the initial picture I took a month ago, seen HERE.









And now for your viewing pleasure, here is a video to show PART ONE of the bottling process. As you can see, there's not a whole lot to it. You just need to know when to turn the valve.



Obviously, I still had one more step to do, which leads us to PART TWO of the process...


CORKING THE WINE
Last year, I did not technically "cork" my batches of wine. Rather, I used plastic tasting corks because that is what was provided in my wine kit. Tasting corks work well if you've already opened a bottle of wine and want to extend the life of it over a couple weeks. But they are not a long term solution. Insert my new toy.

Pictured to the right you'll see my double-lever wine corker... and it is awesome! Without question, this was the most fun I had throughout the process. Not only did it make me feel manly, but it also was just plain cool to use.

It also was a symbolic ending to the whole process, and now we all know where the phrase "put a cork in it" comes from.

I have one more video to share that displays the wine corker in action. Enjoy!



NOW WHAT?
The wine is bottled, so it's ready to drink, right? Well, not exactly. You could drink it, and it's not like anything bad would happen. However, the taste would leave a lot to be desired. Right now the wine is very young and has a strong bite to it... almost acidic. That will subside in time, as the wine ages and becomes more stable and smooth.

So for now, the wine is back in my closet, laying on it's side. Leaving it like this for a few days will completely seal the cork, not allowing any oxygen to get into the bottle.

I actually bought some labels for this batch of wine, so that I can properly label it as a Pinot Grigio. I will probably slap those on this weekend and the put it back in my closet (this time upright), where it will remain for the foreseeable future.

I may open a bottle in May, just to see how it's progressing. However, I want to wait a good three months before I start sharing this wine with others. Then I will be more than happy to share the Nectar of the Gods with my fellow man.

Oh, and one more thing. In my previous posts, I always included a picture of the hydrometer. This time I didn't, but I did take one final reading. It showed a specific gravity of 0.992. My initial reading taken in late February was 1.098. Using these two numbers (my start gravity and my end gravity) I can calculate the Alcohol by Volume, or ABV, using a simple formula. My wine has an ABV of 13.9%, which is within the correct range of where a Pinot Grigio should be. So even if this wine turns out to taste terribly, I can at least take pride in knowing I fermented it correctly!

Rye Addis -- Winemaker Extraordinaire