How to Bottle Wine (Midwest Supplies)
So you are ready to bottle your wine? Great. Bottling wine is very easy to do, but there are a few things to know to make sure your wine will last for a long time. First, here’s a list of everything you’ll need to bottle your wine:
- Auto Siphon – 5/16″ Racking Cane
- Bottle Filler
- About 30 750 ml Wine Bottles
- About 30 corks
- Potassium Metabisulfite
- A Corker
- Optional; The Rack Magic™ Siphon makes it easier, but you may also use a racking cane and siphon tubing.
Sanitation
Sanitization is always important in making sure your wine stays the best it can be. Sanitize your bottles with a potassium metabisulfite solution. Make sure that all of your bottles are clean before you use them. If there is any form of mold, or stuck on residue, that you cannot get out of the bottle, then do not use the bottle. It doesn’t take much to make a good wine go bad. You can either use a bucket filled with sanitizer to submerge the bottles, or you can use a funnel to pour the solution from bottle to bottle to sanitize them. Alternately, you can use a bottle rinser (sulfiter). Any of these three ways will work well to prepare your bottles for filling.
Corks
We won’t get into the different types of cork here (see our article, “Types of Wine Corks” for more information), but if you use standard corks then you might want to treat them first. You want to use two bowls that fit inside each other for this. Mixing bowls work well. Fill the larger bowl with water and metabisulphite. Add your corks, and place the smaller bowl on top to help weigh down the corks. The metabisulphite will kill any bacteria that may be in the corks. Plus, it makes the corks very slick, which makes them easier to insert into the bottle. We would recommend soaking the corks for about an hour before use.