Small Bottles

[Tarpon230]

Any one use small bottles? I have a 5 gallon bucket california Cab in secondary ferm and my wife wants to place some in small bottles. Pros & cons? Thanks

 

[kashew201]

Cons.. lots of work filling them, corking them, storage space.. Pros.. no need to drink a whole 750ml or 1.5l of wine

 

[kashew201]

Oh also smaller bottles are adaptable to temp changes faster than a larger bottle.

 

[roadwarriorsvt]

Another "pro" is you can give someone a bottle of wine but it will only cost you half a bottle!

 

[joeswine]

little one's

excellent for giving as holiday gifts,or for sampling to a friend or fellow wine maker,lots of good reasons to sometimes split a large batch into 375's and 75o's

 

[Dugger]

Small bottles are useful for sampling during the aging process - I usually do about 6 of the 375 ml bottles per batch to allow sampling at 6,9,12,15 etc. months.
Your drinking habits may also dictate whether small bottles are preferred - if you only drink 2 glasses of wine at a time and larger opened bottles would sit for a while, the smaller ones may be better.

 

[Boatboy24]

I had a split last night. They are nice for testing during aging, as was mentioned. Another thing is they "keep you honest". If you plan to have two glasses of wine and no more, you know you're done when the bottle is empty.

 

[Rocky]

I find the splits handy when one 750 ml bottle is not quite enough and a 1500 ml is too much!

 

[RoyParker]

I did a 3 gallon batch of strawberry for my daughter to give away as gifts when my grandson was born.

We bottled it in 187ml clear bottles and just capped them.

Not real elegant but a very nice little gift to give away to many family and friends.

She designed some very cute labels and they looked great.

Again.... might be offensive to wine elite but everyone loved the little gift and many asked for a larger bottle when I do another batch.

 

[roadwarriorsvt]

Thats a great idea Roy!

 

[bakervinyard]

I'm in the process of making a Reisling and Merlot. I'll be using the small bottle as well. Both will be given out at my daughters wedding as favors next June.

 

[Stefani]

I usually like small bottles for bench testing sampling for aging. When I bottle a 5-6 gallon batch of wine, I bottle one 375ml after a five 750 bottles of the batch. At the end of the bottling of the batch I have 5-6 samplers taken through the bottling. Then when I'm ready to test after some aging time, I would take a small bottle to see if the rest of the batch might be ready.