Yes, we bottle the whole batch....or you can do half a batch of wine as bubbly and sorbate and bottle the rest as plain still wine....or you could do a few bottles of any wine you have going now, just to give it a try.
This is how we do it...Do not stabilize the wine...Rinse sulfite off of everything you use, buckets, bottles, stoppers, spoons, etc....don't want to hinder a new fermentation...
First we rack the wine to a bottling bucket, add 1+3/4 cup plain white sugar that has been dissolved in small amount of boiling water [let cool] and a package of EC-1118 yeast [rehydrated in 1/4 cup warm water] for 6 gallons....stir continuously while bottling, to keep yeast in suspention....bottle...put in stoppers and wire hoods....let it sit for 2 months to let the yeast ferment in the bottle...shake it now and then to mix the yeast....then turn it up-side-down to get the lees into the plastic stoppers.Then you do the riddling thing, which is just making all the lees go into the neck of the bottle so you can dégorge it out.
When we dégorge we usually like to do about 3 or more bottles at a time, use one bottle as a topping off wine and recork the others.
We tried to do 12 bottles a couple weeks ago, putting that many bottles in the freezer brought the temp up in there and some of the necks didn't want to freeze...some did and some didn't....we have a 'Quick Freeze' button on the freezer, forgot about using it. Just had the door open for too long positioning the bottles and that was a lot of warm mass of bottles to chill down.Usually it takes about 1 1/2 hours in our chest freezer [-5*F] to get the necks of the bottles frozen about 2-3 inches up. Always keep the neck of the bottle down so you don't stir up the lees again.
This will be trial and error...if you have a freezer in your fridge, start with one bottle...see how long it takes to freeze it...open and enjoy...next time maybe try 3 bottles and re-cork 2....
Here are some of the last 2 batches we have made....
These are the crates that I use to 'riddle' the wine in...
Yikes!!!
Only 6 bottles left to do....time to make some more.
I like to use at least one clear bottle in each batch...then you can watch the yeast work and watch it clear.
I have a lady friend who books conventions and parties at a convention center at a resort, she gets me champagne/sparkling wine bottles....got 2 boxes that had screw tops....they were nice heavy bottles....They had a screw top but had a big lip under the screw part....we tried one of those bottles and they worked fine...the lip held the wire hood okay.Some sparkling wine bottles don't have a punt on the bottom of the bottle, I always worry about them being strong enough to hold the pressure, so far so good.
Hope this info helps and gets you into the world of making bubbly.
Edited by: Northern Winos 
