Saturday was bottling day. After making a quick run to the store to buy some bottles and corks and rent a corker and filter, it was time to take the wine out of the carboy and put it into bottles for long term storage.
We ran into a bit of a snag right away because I couldn’t seem to get the pump on the electric filter primed. After working at it for a bit, I decided that the wine would be fine without being filtered and so we moved it from the carboy into the pail, leaving most of the sludge behind in the carboy. Everyone wanted to have a look as the siphoning was going on. Hopefully no hair found its way into the wine.
Then it was time to put it into bottles and cork them. Everyone got a turn loading the corks and pulling on the handle.
There was a little sampling involved in the process—not by any of the junior winemakers, of course. The jury is still out on the finished product. It will be interesting to see how the taste profile of the wine changes as time goes on.
