In February 2020 Wendy and I were finally able to bottle the Amarone Classico wine that we started in April 2019. Approximately 10 months after starting the process we finally got around to bottling the wine. We purchased a pump and filter system that was designed to filter no more that ten gallons at a time. The filter system is a four-stage process that requires us to replace the filters after each stage. It’s a bit time consuming but apparently worth the effort. When our chapter blind judged the wine it did rather well in the categories of color, body and taste.
In order to expedite the bottling process we purchased a “floor” corker. Fortunately it is adjustable. As all our bottles were not of the same size we had to make minor adjustments to the plunger. Wendy made the labels for the bottles. As I mentioned in my prior blog, she decided to call the wine Raven Red. I used a heat gun to heat shrink the caps on.
In Bob’s Blog #1 I mentioned that in the initial filtering process we got wine all over the floor and walls. In the final filtering process we (mostly me) ended up with wine all over the counter, floor, cabinets and range. I was looking at Wendy and she was taking pictures of me and neither noticed that wine was spraying out of the filter. Notice the stupid grin on my face in the photo below. Three filters are required during each of the four-stages of the filter process. In on of the stages I managed to put one of the filters in incorrectly. Stupid! I’ll never make that mistake again. Or will I?
Just in case you want to know, we started off with approximately five gallons and ended up with four and a half. I like to believe that most of the half gallon was lost during the filtering process and not the spilling process. The initial filtering was done in four stages over a six-week period. The final four stages were done in less than an hour.
It is my hope that more of our members get involved with making wine. Maybe even planting a small vineyard. For the most part Wendy and I made and bottled the wine without help from our chapter. It is a lot more fun and less time consuming when we do the final filtering, bottling, corking and capping as a group.
