If you have ever opened a bottle of your personally made wine and found it to be “off”or simply doesn’t taste right, then open a second bottle to see if it tastes the same as the first. If the second bottle tastes fine, then you have a…“bottle maintenance” situation.

Your wines are made in 30 bottle lots and are bottled from the same vessel (carboy), therefore, if the lot is off then all 30 bottles will be off. ( Mind you, once in a while you may have a corked bottle meaning the cork is tainted. BUT this is very, very rare). If only one or even two bottles taste ‘funky’ and the remaining 28 or so taste like they should then it’s time to inspect your bottles and perform bottle maintenance with ” Craig’s Pink Stuff ” to remove built up stains. (click here).

In the meantime, to avoid this problem follow these 3 easy steps below…one bottle at a time!

RINSE ‘EM AS YOU GO!

By nature, we are lazy. So, the less work I have to do, the better. I don’t want to be scrubbing and brushing out my bottles 30 or even 60 at a time because there is dried wine stains, bugs and/or mold in my bottles. To avoid this…rinse ’em as you go! Each time you finish a bottle of wine, simply follow these 3 steps:

1. Rinse out well your bottle 3 or 4 times with hot water. Remove shrink cap and label.

2. Let it stand upside down to drip dry.

Don’t leave water in the bottle for we have all seen what happens to our pet’s water dish if not changed regularly-it gets slimy. Also, you can get a calcium build up over time.

3. Once dry, place upside down in an empty wine box to keep dust and dirt out.

I keep an empty box by the stairs to my basement because I don’t want to walk all the way downstairs with the box until it’s full. I told you I was lazy.

Also, remove your shrink tops and labels when you rinse your bottles. Doing this one bottle at a time saves you doing it 30 or 60 times at our store. This will save you a lot of time when you come in to bottle.Cheers!