Dating your Bottles?

[CoachPieps]

I put two dates, the date the must was started and the date the wine was bottled. I put the full date, i believe the wineries use the date when the fruit was harvested.

 

[PPBart]

It depends on what you want the date to tell you... put whatever makes you comfortable...

I typically do not put a date on the bottle unless it is to identify vintage (e.g., Mucadine 2010). I don't see much value in dating wines made from kits, or frozen fruits, or concentrates (except of course if required for competition, etc). I do, however, number every bottle of wine I make, and that number traces back to a database that has all the batch info. Also, each batch is numbered, and that number is recorded on the cork of each bottle -- that way, I easily can pick out a specific wine from a rack containing hundreds of bottles laying on their sides.

 

[Dugger]

It should be #1 if you know it, if its a kit, they were probably picked the fall before, I'm assuming.

The idea is that based on the year you know what the growing conditions were like during that year.

Actually kit wines are made from a blend of vintages - to make sure the kit wines are relatively consistent from one year to the next, they blend the new harvest juice with previous year(s) juice to achieve this. The vintage year is thus not as important for kits as it is for grapes/juice.

 

[Dirtydog420]

I put the 'vintage' date (year fruit harvest) second on label and the month/year I bottled it on the bottom for drinking reference since I bottle 75% of my wine after 6 months of aging...