The Final Touches on our First Batch

The final step is upon us: labeling and sealing the top of our wine bottles, such that they're ready to share. Exciting!

Bruce & I both spent a day in photoshop, messing with some images, adding text, and coming up with labels that convey, well, us! The 07 errs on traditional, while the 06 errs on creative. We'll let our friends and family guess who designed which!

Then we printed on fancy paper, and Bruce adhered to the bottles with - milk! Yes, I was concerned about an odd smell too, but all the hip kids on Winepress.us use milk to adhere the labels, so we're letting them completely dry and will do the sniff test in a week or so.

Final stage is to put the cap thing over the cork. Not at all functional, but it makes the wine look way more professional. They're made of shrinky-dink like plastic; when exposed to heat they shrink. After failed attempts over a fire in the fireplace, we used it as an excuse to play with our cigarette-lighter-torch our roommate Bryce & I picked up in Taiwan last year.

Soon they'll be ready for the holidays!

First Racking of 08s

This weekend we racked our 08s: ended up with 6 gallons of Cab; 5 gallons of Zin, and the rest in a hybrid 5-gallon carboy (not far from 50/50 mix). We re-read about adding sulfites, and decided to add a token 25 ppm.