Bottling Procedure for Wine

I need to bottle a batch of wine and am having difficulty in finding a good set of instructions. I’ve bottled many batches of beer, but this will be my first (and possibly) last occassion to bottle wine. Can someone point me towards a tutorial or basic instructions?

Biggest questions:

  1. Should I rack to a bottling bucket and use my bottle filler?
  2. I have synthetic corks sealed in their packaging. Should I soak them in StarSan or some other sanitizer?
  3. How full should I fill the bottles?

To answer your questions in order: Yes, No and When you pull out your filler it will be approximately the correct level.

  1. You need to use your bottling bucket to add the last dose of sulphite.
  2. The corks are clean. No winery on earth soaks their corks. Just dump’em in the hopper. Although it might help the artificial cork material to slide in easier.
  3. Self explanatory. Unless you use a Ferrari filler. Then fill about 2 1/2 inches from the lip of the bottle.

I would answer

  1. Yes
  2. Yes
  3. when you pull out your bottle filler.
    You santize everything else that comes in contact with your wine, why take a chance by not sanitizing your synthetic corks?

Thanks for the help guys.

Backstory: The friend who got me into brewing got out of the hobby about 4 years ago after finding out he could no longer drink (medical reasons). He still had a six gallon carboy of red wine sitting in his basement that he was finally ready to get rid of. It was mine for the taking, I just had to bottle it :smiley:

Follow up to this, I have seen individuals that say they throw their bottles in a dish washer. Can I do this? If I do what should I use for the cleaner the regular stuff I would put in there for dishes?

Don’t use anything as a cleaner, but set it to sanitize so the heat of the water will sanitize the bottles.

Ok, and I don’t need to use a sanitizer after that?