The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: bottling

Oak Trials: Into the Bottle

It is finally time to bottle the oak trials today!  I am also bottling the 2009 Petite Sirah that I did egg white fining on, so I can compare it to the unfined wine side-by-side.  The chardonnays all cleared out really nicely, which is great so I can bottle directly from the individual jugs — […]

Bottling 2009 Vintage Barrel Wines

We finally set a date and bottled the 2009 Merlot and Petite Sirah from Van Alyea Ranch in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma.  The wines are tasting great, and we could have bottled before now but I realized I didn’t have a spigot to attach a hose to clean out the barrels after they were empty. […]

Cellar Craft Rhone White and Winexpert Spanish Rose Bottling

I bottled both the Cellar Craft 2010 limited edition Marsanne-Viognier-Roussanne and the Winexpert Spanish Rose today, getting ready for summer sipping.  The MVR wasn’t quite clear, which I think might be due to my use of marbles for topping up my wines.  When wines with marbles are moved at all from their place of rest […]

Bottling Party in Fallbrook

We drove up to Fallbrook yesterday to meet up with Paul and a bunch of his neighbors to bottle his 2009 Merlot and Petite Sirah from Lambert Bridge Vineyard in Sonoma (the same grapes we made wine from that need to be bottled soon).  It was a very nice day, sunny and warm but not […]

Bottling Chilean Carmenere on TV

I had the opportunity to show off my new shop on Fox morning news today. It was really fun, except for the 5 am starting time. In the first segment I demonstrated how to start a wine kit, then in this second segment I bottled my Winexpert Chilean Carmenere. The camera guy got a little […]

Bottling 2009 Fallbrook Syrah

The bottling binge continues!  I finally bottled the 2009 Fallbrook Syrah, our first harvest from Live Oak Vineyard.  We unfortunately came in short due to a heat wave just before harvest, so we have a total of 11 gallons of wine to split between the three of us.  We will each get 18 bottles, which […]

Bottling Binge

Seems to be time to restock the cellar!  Having just bottled my 2009 Primitivo, today I bottled another batch of Winexpert Chamblaise. This will be the fourth time to make this kit, it’s such a great easy-drinker. This batch cleared very nicely and I did not have to filter as I did with previous batches. […]

Finally Bottling Primitivo

I have a few wines that are due for bottling, but I was waiting until I opened my shop because I needed corks, and it seemed to make sense that I should buy them from myself.  So today I’m finally bottling my Amador county primitivo.  I’ll bottle most of it as 100% varietal, but I’m […]

Getting Ready for Syrah Harvest

I got an email today from Mike Hoffman that the syrah started veraison and harvest should be around the first week of September.  Hopefully there won’t be a last-minute heat wave like last year, which raisined a lot of the grapes before we could pick them for wine. I’ll need to start thinking about what […]

Hanoi Towers of Wine

Today was a game of wine shuffling.  My hubby commented I’m playing Towers of Hanoi with the wines.  Here’s what I have to do:  I have 2 carboys of the syrah, and Paul needs those carboys back, so I need to move them into 5-gallon better bottles.  The only 5-gallon better bottles I have are […]