My Update

[dmcquade]

Hey everyone!


Haven't posted in a while, so I figured I would update everyone on my progress. My wine is coming along and it's about time to bottle. I have to free up my single carboy (I know, sad) for my Mosti that's coming in tomorrow.


My first batch was one of the Wine Expert Selection Shiraz. It started off a little tame and for one reason or another the starting SG was pretty low. I ended up adding some oak chips to see if I could give it a bit more punch. I've also been topping off with some bolz Shiraz wines, so hopefully that will give it some additional character.


My next wine will be a Mosti Fresh Juice Riesling. It was tough choosing just one, but we never buy white wines so it will be nice to have a good supply ... in about 9 months.


If anyone has any tips for my first bottling, feel free to share! My current plan is to read up ahead of time, open a bottle of wine, and start corking!


I know everyone likes pictures, so here's my first baby.

 

[PolishWineP]

It sounds to me like you have it down. Open a bottle of wine and start corking!

 

[Wade E]

Looks good, if ou have a primary with a spigot it makes life a little easier to rack to the bucket and bottle from there.

 

[dmcquade]

That's exactly what I'm planning to do. Load up my primary, connect my bottle filler, and let gravity do the rest.

 

[NorthernWinos]

What in the BIG magnum bottle with what looks like writing on it???

 

[dmcquade]

That's a 6L bottle of the Falkner Amante Super Tuscan (2002). My wife and I got married as her fathers winery (Falkner). As a gift he gave us that bottle which was used as a guestbook. So all of our guests signed the bottle instead of a traditional guestbook.

Now we just need to figure out a time when we have 8 - 16 of our closest friends over to drink it!

 

[dmcquade]

So we got our wine bottled and corked today. It was a rough start, but we figured out a good assembly line method and knocked it out in about 30 minutes. Of course, setup and cleanup took about 3 hours, but the actual bottling wasn't too bad.


We put all the labels on with a bit of frustration. It's really difficult to keep the bubbles out. We finally figured out that using less water makes the label tacky without producing bubbles later. We're going to let them sit overnight and put the foil on them tomorrow if they haven't blown up.


The wine ended up tasting pretty good! I think the oak chips gave it a lot of character. I dried them out in the sun and I'm going to use them the next time I'm cooking a steak or smoking ribs.


Anyhow, we're very please to have our first batch behind us and looking forward to the next batch. I have to say that the help and encouragement from people here has been awesome!


Cheers!

 

[PolishWineP]

Congratulationson learning quickly and getting through the bottling.

And yes, set up is usually the worst of it.

That's why people who have lots of wines going at a time try to bottle more than 1 batch at a time. Once you get the set up work done, you may as well keep going!

 

[PeterZ]

DMC that oak chip idea is awesome!

 

[Tminus5]

Anyone know a source for one-off (empty) large format bottles? That 6L mother above gave me the thought...

Love the idea of using it as your guest book!

Travis

 

[dmcquade]

Anyone know a source for one-off (empty) large format bottles? That 6L mother above gave me the thought...

Love the idea of using it as your guest book!

Travis

You might want to send George and email and see if he can get you one. I'll check with my father-in-law to see where he was able to get his. Give me a couple of days ...


DJ

 

[dmcquade]

I wish I could take credit for the oak chips, but George recommended them ... so kudos to him!