Sanatizing Wine Bottles

Danny, Apologies, I have been traveling.

Here is what I do;

I have a bottle tree; it's as necessary as a corker as far as I am concerned. I also use a jet washer with hot water for rinsing.

New bottles: I rinse on the jet washer, hit it with a shot of detergent (I mix up a good glbutt cleaner, (Alconox) in a quart spray bottle and use it as needed to clean everything, any decent deteregent is fine.)

Rinse 3 times on the jet washer

Give the bottle a final shot of 1% sulfitecitric acid

Hang it on the tree to drain.

Used bottles get the same treatment except I add a swabbing with a bottle brush once I hit the bottle with detergent.

If the bottle came from outside of my control I usually soak them for a bit and pretreat with a 10% bleach-tap water spritz. If I see visible mold, I soak the affected area with the bleach solution if I really want to keep that bottle. You would be suprised how often people return wine bottles unrinsed, it's just not something I would do.

I inspect used bottles once I have cleaned them by holding the base towards my eye and pointing it toward a light; that way if there is any mold in the punt I will see it; that's the area most likey to be infected.

If the bottles will be stored I store them upside down and just eliminate the sulfite spritz.

Once you do this a few times it becomes automatic and you just fly through the process. Some of what I do may be overkill but after getting a wine just right the last thing I want to do is screw it up by trying to save a little time in bottle preparation.

New bottles really don't need any attention if the box looks ok; As I uderstand it the most a winery will do when bottling is blow the bottle down to remove dust.

Hope that helps.

Joe