Bottling Wine

Ken and I have talked about this before on our blogs, but since it's a pretty routine thing around here, I thought I'd mention it again. We live in a wine producing region and we buy the vast majority of our wine locally. Most of our local producers (who are also our neighbors) sell wine en vrac (in bulk) in addition to the bottled product.

Bottling a case of Valençay vin de pays.

Needless to say, the bulk wine is more economical because we don't have to pay for bottles, corks, labels, or the labor to put it all together. And mostly it's the same wine that's in the bottles. The exceptions, of course, are any special vintages or blends and certain "signature" wines that are only sold in bottles.

We have four ten-liter jugs that the winemakers fill up directly from the barrel or tank. They use a hose that looks similar to a gas pump nozzle to fill each jug. Then we take the wine home and fill up our own bottles (that are cleaned and re-used every time, of course) and we cork 'em up and put 'em away.

Each ten-liter jug holds just over a standard case of wine; thirteen bottles and a little more. We've saved bottles from wine we bought during our first year here and use them over and over again. They get rinsed with hot water once they're empty, then they dry on a special bottle rack in the cellar until it's time to fill them again.

For a while we were buying corks at our local wine producers' supply cooperative. Corks for short-duration storage are not expensive when bought by the thousand, and we have a hand-operated corking machine that they sold us for twenty-five euros about five years ago. That all works pretty well, considering that we buy wine for current consumption and not to put away to age for many years.

Recently, however, a friend gave us a little package of re-usable plastic closures and a special corkscrew for them. It turns out that they work very well for our short-term storage needs and will nearly eliminate our need to buy corks.

I'll drink to that!