Bottling Wines

The faucet should be partly opened to allow sufficient time for corking the bottles that have been removed. The corks should be selected perfectly sound, especially if to be kept for a long while. Dip them first in lukewarm water and force them into the bottle with a mallet or a special machine, then cut them off leaving an eighth of an inch above the bottle. Wines are bottled to have them attain the ripeness to which they are susceptible and to be able to keep them in a better condition; generally it requires two years before bottling red wines; only do so when they are found to be of a proper degree and ripeness, neither too sweet nor too sour, but of a perfect and pure flavor. White wine can be bottled earlier than red--one year to eighteen months, after it has lost its sweet taste. The clearness of a wine being one of its most essential points, an effort should be made to obtain this result; if not of a perfect limpidity, then wait a few days longer, and if not then clear it must be drawn off and transferred to another very clean cask, and clarified over again. Bottles must be rinsed carefully with lead shot or small pebbles. Bottle the wine on a clear, cold day; avoid stormy weather, and if possible select a day when the wind blows from the northeast. Bore the cask with a gimlet at an inch and a half from the inside border and stop as soon as the wine appears, then push in the opened faucet and strike it in such a way as not to disturb the dregs. The spigot must be left sufficiently open to allow enough time for filling the bottles while the corks are being put in. If required for keeping, then cover the cork and about an inch and a half of the neck of the bottle with some prepared wax, by dipping it in the heated wax and rotating the bottle until the adhering wax is cold; this coating keeps the corks from molding and from being eaten up by insects. To make this wax melt a pound of common rosin with two ounces of yellow wax and half an ounce of mutton tallow; color it with animal black, ochre, etc.; if too brittle add more tallow, and if the opposite, then more rosin. The bottles are to be stacked slightly inclined so that the wine can touch the cork at all times. The above is an abridged direction on preparing and bottling wines. The utensils needed are: one large funnel, two measures of three gallons each, a faucet for drawing off the wine and one other one, a mallet to push in the corks, a beater for the bung-hole in the cask, a pump and a felt filter, or round paper filters, for filtering the wine from the bottom of the cask.