Reusing Bottles

Ever since I bottled the 2009 red, I belatedly realize that is worth saving wine bottles. Otherwise I need to pay around 120-130 Forints for new ones. That's about 45 Eurocents each. Multiply that by say 100 bottles, and it's a chunk of money.

Although I don't even drink all that much wine, I've now got around 120 bottles in the cellar, cleaned and waiting to be filled.  Plus a dozen or two more, waiting to be cleaned.

On the other hand, cleaning the damn things is labour-intensive and boring. First you need to get the collars and labels off. While many labels come off easily with soaking in hot water, some are stuck with some industrial super-glue that needs heavy duty treatment. Once in a while I fill the bath with piping hot water, dump in 20 or 30 bottles, and after a while, go to work to remove the labels.

Ah, but that's just step 1. They still need to be sterilized, this time with a solution of sodium metabisulphite in cold water.

And now, they need to dry out. This is harder than it sounds. Glass bottles stubbornly resist drying-out, in any kind of weather.  My technique is to leave them upside down for the best part of a day to let most of the water drip out; then I turn them right-way up, cover with sheets of kitchen paper weighted down a little so they don't blow off (the kitchen paper keeps out insects and dust), leave them in the summer house until the next time we visit - by then they will be dry. Finally I stopper them up with a rolled up wad of kitchen paper, put them in boxes and bring to the cellar.

The first batch I bottled, I didn't do any of this. I simply rinsed them out, let them drip up-side down for a couple of hours, then filled them up.  This is all completely against the book!  If they are not sterilized, bacteria and microbes can remain, ready to attack the wine - so sayeth the book. However, I'm not sure it made much difference at all. While a couple of the bottles went bad (the wine fizzed up when I pulled out the cork, and it tasted bad), there can be various reasons for this, and 95% were fine.

Similar goes for all the equipment we use - buckets, etc.  Theoretically it should all be sterilized, but in practice it would add an awful lot of time to the work.  It seems the average "man in the street" around here doesn't bother - in fact, I get strange looks if I propose sterilizing the equipment!

Racking, Decanting, First Buds

On Friday this Easter weekend we racked the 2011 wines. The weather forecast for the weekend was for cold and wet. Since a lot of equipment must be washed and dried, a warmer dry day is best. Luckily, on Friday morning it was still pleasant, and the rain only started later in the day.  By today, Sunday, the cellar (8 degrees) is already warmer than outside!

We didn't rack the 2009 barrel of white, mainly to save time, and anyway it has been racked a number of times before.  It took around 3.5 hours to do the 2011 wines.

Most important, I got a chance to taste them!

The red has no bad flavours, but it really hasn't developed any character at all yet.  After racking, there is around 75l.

The white in the large barrel tastes quite balanced, not as acidic as the 2009 white. We have about 150l of it.

There is also a smaller barrel of white which was from the second pressing, and Sándor says not enough sugar was added. This one definitely doesn't taste as good as the other white, the difference is quite marked, even though I don't have a particularly strong sense of taste (and even less of smell). There's about 40l of this one.

Finally, I had a small quantity of white which the girls pressed by foot, from the first batch of grapes to ripen, the Muscately variety. This has been in a glass carboy, or ballon, so I could have a bit more visibility to the process.  After taking out the wine to clean out the lees, I decided to bottle most of it, rather than wait for the carboy to dry out, as the day was getting colder.  I filled 11 bottles with the amount siphoned out first, which was clearest. A remaining few litres from nearer the bottom of the carboy went into the smaller barrel of white.  This one is a pale colour and a bit acidic, okay for fröccs (spritzer).  Doesn't seem to be much sediment in the bottles but let's see after it settles for a while.

 

In the 2009 reds and whites we bottled in 2010, there is a significant amount of sediment in the bottles. In the case of the red, it's not very noticeable. But the whites are in clear bottles and it looks rather ugly and off-putting.

Which leads to the subject of decanting wines. Until recently I would happily drink wine from the bottle, but with my own wines I always decant them.  Historically, wines were decanted as much for reasons of sediment in the bottles, as of flavour and appearance.  Nowadays, commercial wines are usually cleared and filtered so that there is no sediment (although I have seen sediment in some Hungarian commercial wines.)  When I decant my wine, I slowly removing the cork without disturbing the contents of the bottle, and pour gently so that in the end a few mm of sediment remains in the bottle.  As well as not separating the sediment,  the flavour of the red develops greatly with a lengthy period of time to breathe (at least 30 minutes, but even next day it tastes good without being stoppered overnight), and also adjust to room temperature if it came directly from the cellar.

Last and not least, the vines were pruned a few weeks ago and growth starts to appear. The weather forecast for tonight is below zero... hopefully frost will not damage the vines and other fruit trees.