Wine bottling notes

I bottled the wine over the weekend*. I think I'm getting the hang of siphoning, as more stuff gets into the bottle than onto the floor.

I have deduced, somewhat unscientifically, that this wine is a Riesling, based on the similarity between the flavor of this wine and a Riesling that our neighbor served one night last summer. This wine has a much greener taste, very dry, very tart, won't win any awards, and I suspect that the grapes where a little underripe when I picked them. Also it probably could have used a little added sugar.

One big mistake I made here was that I racked too soon, before the wine had cleared completely. I did this becuase the initial ferment was in a 5-gallon bucket which had too much air inside, and I was afraid of making the same mistake I made with the dandelion wine. Really, I should have racked it again, after it cleared more. Instead, it sat on a thin layer of must which crystallized on the bottom of the jugs. That can't have been good.

I'm calling this a success, especially because I can look forward to a whole summer of feeding this wine to friends and watching them pretend that they like it.

* I actually bottled half of the wine around Christmas and gave most of that to the neighbors that provided the grapes.