When putting dates on wine bottles, does the date reflect:

1. Year the grapes were harvested
2. Year of start of primary fermentation
3. Year in which the wine was bottled

I will be bottling around the end of this year/beginning of next and don't
know what date to put on the bottles.

Thanks,

"Michael E. Carey" wrote:

When putting dates on wine bottles, does the date reflect:
1. Year the grapes were harvested
2. Year of start of primary fermentation
3. Year in which the wine was bottled

The "vintage" (lit. wine year) normally indicates the year of the harvest.
Since the harvest is typically in July-November (in the Northern
Hemisphere), the year of the harvest should be the same as the year of
primary fermentation (unless the juice was frozen and fermented at some
subsequent time). The year of bottling, typically 2-10 years later, does not
usually appear on the label.

However, it is not a capital offence to vary this tradition. If you are not
selling to the public, you can put whatever is meaningful to YOU on the
label.

Since I make wine all year long, and may make several batches of the same
sort of wine, I use the day I pitched the yeast as the "vintage". I also
include the bottling date.

-----------------------------------
CHÂTEAU NIKOLAYOV

Cherry Wine

Vat #2 – 14 November 2001

13.4 % a.b.v.

Mis en bouteille 8 septembre 2003
par le propriétaire, Negodki
-----------------------------------

Negodki wrote:

The year of bottling, typically 2-10 years later, does not
usually appear on the label.

Port wine tends to an exception to this...

--
charles

"Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days."
- W.C. Fields

In article ,
"Michael E. Carey" wrote:

When putting dates on wine bottles, does the date reflect:

1. Year the grapes were harvested
2. Year of start of primary fermentation
3. Year in which the wine was bottled

I will be bottling around the end of this year/beginning of next and don't
know what date to put on the bottles.

Thanks,



Um.. Yes.

I often provide a start date and a bottling date for my fruit wines. In
commercial grape wines, the year of harvest is the vintage date.

--
Greg Cook
http://homepage.mac.com/gregcook/Wine

(remove spamblocker from my email address)

charles,
could you please tell me the reason for this and the date that would be
used? thanks, jim book
"Charles H" wrote in message
...
Negodki wrote:

The year of bottling, typically 2-10 years later, does not
usually appear on the label.

Port wine tends to an exception to this...

--
charles

"Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days."
- W.C. Fields

jim book wrote:

charles,
could you please tell me the reason for this and the date that would be
used? thanks, jim book

Sure.

I was talking about Late Bottled Vintage Port to be specific. LBV is
aged in casks for 4-6 years and is bottled on a certain date. Since Port
Makers declare certain years to be 'vintage', it's not really indicative
of the quality of the wine. The bottling date is important because it
shows how much time the port has spent in wood.

--
charles

"Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days."
- W.C. Fields

I don't follow the traditional method. I use kits, and I put the year
of bottling on the label. I place a small code on the label that will
remind me of the kit manufacturer and the month that it was bottled.
That way, if it ends up being particularly good, I can buy it again.
However, I have found that while most of my kit wines are good (i.e.
quite drinkable and occasionally excellent by my tastes), an
exceptional batch is usually not repeated by buying the same kit
again.

okay, I havn't bottled any wine yet, but the way I plan to do so is
this: I give each batch a number represented by the date and each
bottle will be a sub set of this number. I have a spreadsheet that
will let me look each bottle up and see exactly where it came from
etc.

I started my first batch on September 21st 2003. the batch number is
3092101 (YYMMDDxx) where YY is year (drop the zero) MM is month
(keep the zero) DD is date (keep zeros) and xx is batch number of
that day, incase I start more then one batch on the same day. This
works because I didn't even know about winemaking before 2000, let
alone had any batches off.... When I bottle, I will assign a
bottle number after the batch.. ie: 3092101-01, -02, -03, etc... I
thought about useing letters, (3092101a, etc..) but this won't work on
anything over 5 gallons (and even that might be pushing it)

On the bottle I plan to put the year it was started, as well as the
bottle ID number. That way I will also know if the wine was some of
the first out, or if it came mostly from the bottom of the barrel (so
to speak)... might make a differance, might not.. doesn't hurt
anything either way.

Each batch has a sheet that has dates of racking, sg, pH, what kind of
wine it is, how much sugar was needed, everything I can think of,
including how many bottles of what size were used, what color the
bottle, and what color of plastic sleeve got used. That way I should
be able to find bottles faster (if I ever get to that point)

One of the tings I do at my job is very tedious, slow, and requires no
thought watsoever.. I have alot more time to plan and think about
stuff like this than I do to actually make the wine..

If anyone is interested in a copy of the spreadsheet or batch
template, let me know. I would be more than happy to send you one...



On 19 Oct 2003 08:15:34 -0700, (Luap) wrote:

I don't follow the traditional method. I use kits, and I put the year
of bottling on the label. I place a small code on the label that will
remind me of the kit manufacturer and the month that it was bottled.
That way, if it ends up being particularly good, I can buy it again.
However, I have found that while most of my kit wines are good (i.e.
quite drinkable and occasionally excellent by my tastes), an
exceptional batch is usually not repeated by buying the same kit
again.



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