How much do you prep for bottling day?

[NorCal]

As I got up at the crack of dawn to beat the Sierra Foothills heat, I was wondering if other winemakers prep their wine before bottling day.

I always rack the wine out of the aging container, do my blending, SO2 additions days or weeks ahead of time. I like to bottle out of carboys, since they are easy to handle and I know they are clean and sanitary.

I've got 80% Syrah/ Mourvèdre /Grenache in the barrel and 80% Grenache /Mourvèdre / Syrah in the Spiedel. I took 30+ gallons out of the barrel for the Syrah bottling (next Wed) and then put the Grenache from the Spiedel into the barrel for the final GSM bottling in a few weeks.

 

[Johny99]

I go the way you do. Rack to blend, once it is stable, meta. Let it rest a couple of weeks to make sure everything is stable, then bottle.

 

[semenn]

The other day I poured the last barrel of Cabernet in bottles. He poured through the tap straight from the barrel. Additionally, SO2 did not add. Now the bottles are packed in the cellar for rest and endurance.

 

[dcbrown73]

I tend to rack and SO2 the week prior, then wash / sanitize the bottles just prior to bottling.

 

[ibglowin]

Every time I blend it seems like I will get some amount of acid to fall out which would have been in the wine if I blended and bottled within a day or two so i always blend and wait a month minimum just in cases.........

 

[balatonwine]

I don't blend. Only make white or rosé wines. So given those differing issues, once the wine is set aside for natural degassing and bulk aging it gets the kid glove treatment from that point. Do not touch it again until bottling, and gravity only to move it to the bottles (i.e. no pumps). The philosophy (i.e. without empirical evidence) is bottle shock is bad enough, no need to add to it by additional disturbance.

 

[dralarms]

I sanitize 10 to 12 cases at a time, leaving a little kmeta and citric acid in them with a synthetic t cork. Then on bottling day I drain the ones I need and stacked them in my rack I use for bottling and bottle using my allinonewinepump.com. with the addition of the flow adjuster I can cork while bottling.

 

[bkisel]

I don't blend. Bottles are washed anywhere from 1 to several days before bottling. To bottle I go from the carboy to a bucket and stir in 1/4 tsp (to 6 gals.) of k-meta. Bottles and racking cane are sanitized by k-meta spritzing, corks are removed from the cork-a-dor and put in a bowl placed alongside the floor corker. I've never bottled more than one 6 gallon batch at a time so bottling goes relatively quickly. I'll thoroughly rinse my equipment after bottling but generally don't wash the equipment until a day or two after bottling.

 

[rustbucket]

Bill, I pretty much follow the same procedure as you. The only pain in the process comes with removing labels on commercial wine bottles that I can't bear to leave behind after a diner out. I sneak these out of the restaurant when I leave.

I don't blend. Bottles are washed anywhere from 1 to several days before bottling. To bottle I go from the carboy to a bucket and stir in 1/4 tsp (to 6 gals.) of k-meta. Bottles and racking cane are sanitized by k-meta spritzing, corks are removed from the cork-a-dor and put in a bowl placed alongside the floor corker. I've never bottled more than one 6 gallon batch at a time so bottling goes relatively quickly. I'll thoroughly rinse my equipment after bottling but generally don't wash the equipment until a day or two after bottling.

 

[bkisel]

Bill, I pretty much follow the same procedure as you. The only pain in the process comes with removing labels on commercial wine bottles that I can't bear to leave behind after a diner out. I sneak these out of the restaurant when I leave.

For sure some of those labels can be a challange to remove. However, being as frugal as I am I'll "force" myself to do the work.

 

[Boatboy24]

The only pain in the process comes with removing labels on commercial wine bottles that I can't bear to leave behind after a diner out. I sneak these out of the restaurant when I leave.

Hey, you paid for it!

 

[JohnT]

Prepping the wine is the easy thing. A week before I bottle, I rack and then adjust the SO2. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezey!

The hard bit is getting everything clean and sanitized, Setting up the winery to provide as much room as possible, making arrangements for food, coffee, Etc..

Oh, and most time consuming of all, obtaining and prepping enough bottles!

Just last weekend, I had 9 folks bottling. We started at 8am, bottled 57 cases, then had everything broken down, cleaned, put away by 11:30am. The amounts to roughly 16 cases per hour!

We ran with 2 bottle fillers, two floor corkers, One person to top each bottle off, one person to rinse bottles with k-meta solution, and 3 people that cleaned each bottle, cased up the wine, and then stacked each case.

This took a lot of work to set up.

 

[NorCal]

Prepping for the last bottling session of the season! The Grenache and Syrah are in the bottle and 60 gallons of the Rhone blend to go next weekend.