Bottling the 2013

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Published: Thursday, 23 October 2014 20:31

Written by David DeCiero

For the final part of the 2013 winemaking season, I was ready to bottle.  I decided to do a simple splash of an additional 15 ppm of SO2 to negate the oxidative effects of bottling.  This would bring the free SO2 to 40 ppm before bottling, so it would hopefully bring it back to 30 ppm in the bottle.  I had bought 2 100 packs of corks, so my plan was to open one and use them all up.  This meant that I would be able to do the 50/50 blend and then leave the remaining single varietals to be bottled later.  So, I blended 20 gallons and was off to the races.  The Enolmatic worked like a charm and it never failed me.  After about an hour and a half, I was done.  I ended up with 96 full bottles and 3 magnums, so I had 1 left over cork.  I’m just waiting till I have more to bottle so I can bottle the rest and use up the full set of 100 corks.  It is never a good idea to leave a half open bag of natural corks, so I guess I’ll just have to make more wine.