Sounds overfull to me too. I just use a cork as the fill gauge, I set
it even with the top of the bottle and aim for 1/2" to 3/4" headspace.
Be careful with 'Mondavi' style necks, they have that goofy top-hat
type lip to contain drips. They can line up offset and the cork throw
the bottle right off of the corker if you are not careful.
Regards,
Joe

"Pavel314" > wrote in message >...
> I finally got around to bottling the final gallon of grape/elderberry wine
> that's been sitting in my small oak keg for several months. I've been
> topping it off all along and it tasted great. Unfortunately, when I was
> corking the five bottles, one shattered. When you only make five bottles,
> losing one is a 20% loss ratio. In reviewing my notes on this batch, when I
> bottled the other two gallons of this wine straight from the secondary
> several months back, one of those bottles broke, also.
>
> I have a bench corker and soaked the corks for about ten minutes before
> corking. This is my usual soak as if I let them soak too long, they are too
> limp to force through the neck of the corker and end up with mushroom heads
> protruding above the bottle neck.
>
> All of the bottles were originally from commercially bought wine which came
> with corks, not screw tops, so the bottles were made for corking. Also, I'd
> used all five previously at least once for my home brews. I'm wondering if
> maybe my mechanical home corker puts more stress on the bottles than does a
> commercial corker. Maybe I should throw the bottles out after one round of
> corking for homebrew? I hate to waste good bottles, but I'd rather throw out
> a half dozen bottles than lose a bottle of a special brew, as I did today.
>
> Any similar experiences, comments, or theories?
>
>
> Paul