Wine Bottling

I have to start out this post by saying I had an absolute blast wine bottling on Saturday! When we got there I was honestly worried that we would screw it up and ruin our wine. Well, we walked away with 29 & 3/4 bottles of Bella Rosa. And we've already planned to bottle another batch of wine next Spring. The whole process took a little over an hour for the 2 of us. I washed all the bottles and then Lane filled them and corked them. Then I moved on to putting on the foil tops and the wine labels we had made. A lot of the people that worked at the winery loved our labels and thought they were really cool. I think they look great on the bottles. The wine won't be ready for another 6 to 7 months. It takes almost a year or more for the wine to develop its flavor. It had been sitting there for 4 months already fermenting, etc.

After we were done bottling we sat around and finished off our glasses of wine and then tried a few more. We decided that in Nov/Dec we will call Su Vino back and tell them to make up a batch of Zinfandel for us to bottle in the early spring. What's funny is while living in California I tasted a lot of Zinfandels at wineries all over the state including Napa & Sonoma. I absolutely hated the taste of California Zins. They were far too bitter for my taste and I actually made a nasty puckery face after tasting them. They made me want to gag. My friend Jen was there a lot of the time and felt the exact same way. However, when I tried the Su Vino Zinfandel I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was divine. I can close my eyes and remember what it tasted like. Of course we had to buy a bottle of that to bring home. Not like we don't have enough wine already. I think we have around 35 bottles in our wine cabinet right now not including the 2 1/2 cases we brought home this weekend. Granted we'll be giving away at least a dozen of those bottles for gifts this Christmas so we'll have less but still, that's a lot of wine. Anyone want to come over for a party????

Well, I've been busy getting ready for my trip to Indy on Wednesday. I am so excited. This year the Latvian Song and Dance Festival is being held in my hometown. There will be nearly 10,000 Latvians in Indianapolis from July 4th until the 9th. I'll be posting lots of photos when I get back.