"Jack" > wrote in message
...
> In my first attempts at winemaking, I followed Metja Roate's book. 40 some
> years
> ago!
>
> She suggested a small patch of cloth over the cork and extending down the
> sides
> an inch or so, held with a string or elastic. Then dipped in wax. It
> worked.
> Quite well, in fact. Her rationale for the cloth - it makes it easy to
> peel off
> the wax, leaving no residue around the bottle top to fall into the glass
> as the
> wine is poured.

Now that I've read what I wrote, I see I didn't say it correctly. First,
it is interesting that the wax helped the quality in Jack's case but I did
the wax dipping more for the aesthetics -- just to see what it looked like.
When I tried to get the wax to make decorative "streamers" down the
sides, the ends of the streamers simply detached from the glass and curled
up toward the top. The wax cap, resembling a plastic shrink-on, is firmly
stuck to the glass.
I fiddled a bit with embossing a sort of seal into the warm wax but the
only thing I could make a good impression with was a finger or thumbprint.
The little stamps I used, starting with my hanko, seem to be too elaborate
and clogged up all the small spaces. Something like a hanko, but made from
metal would probably work after the wax has set a bit.
Anyway, it was mostly for fun even though I'll probably do it now
instead of plastic sleeves. In my opinion it was actually easier than the
sleeves, once I figured out how.

Regarding someone's question in a different thread about using plain old
parafin, That works well. I did it with some empty 180ml bottles. When I
scavenged the bottles I kept the screw on lids since I couldn't find corks
to fit properly. I just haven't figured out how to color the parafin. Hint:
food coloring won't work. I guess I need to Google that, huh?

Go Drink!

Casey