Syrah - Day 31 - Collecting Bottles

Just a quick reminder that even though bottling is still several months away, it's never too early to start collecting and saving bottles. Especially with holiday gatherings, there should be several opportunities over the next several months to bank up enough bottles to save buying cases of empty bottles when it comes time to encase our own wine in glass.

A few things to be aware of:
Save only bottles that are corked. Screwtop bottles have a different diameter neck and can't be stopped with a standard size cork. Just recycle screwtopped bottles. Champagne and sparkling wine bottles can accept a normal wine cork, so save these, they can also be stopped with a bottle cap, this makes these bottles useful for both beer and wine. Capped champagne bottles are great for doing ongoing tests or tastings as the wine matures without using an entire bottle, as you probably would if the sample bottle were corked.

Clear wine bottles are not as desirable. They let in light, which can damage the wine's flavor as it ages. Clear wine bottles are better for white wines or wines that will be drank without much aging. Our Syrah that is still undergoing secondary fermentation should be expected to age for longer than a clear bottle would make advisable.

Also remember to keep wine case boxes as you collect bottles. The bottles will need to be stored and transferred, both before and after they are filled with wine. It's no fun shuttling around bottles an armload at a time. Save your cardboard cases.

Wash the bottles you save soon after finishing their contents. As I learned from bottling several batches of homebrew beer: bottling is already a labor intensive project, don't complicate it by requiring a thorough wash and rinse of every bottle before sanitizing. It's pretty disgusting and time consuming to wash hundreds of bottles to clean out the little bit of bacteria and mold that inevitably grow on the dregs left in the bottle. It's much easier and significantly less gross to rinse the bottle two or three times right after emptying it of its initial contents.

For the record we will need in the neighborhood of 200 bottles to hold 38 gallons of finished wine. Time to start saving.