Wine Process, Step 5 & 6: Wine Label & Bottling

Wine labels are no longer just a source of information about a wine’s origins and taste; they can also be expressions and extensions of the winemaker. Wine labels have become an opportunity to share the winemaker’s personality, story, and point of view. The label can also give some insight about the wine inside the bottle.  Whether austere or whimsical, colorful or monochromatic, labels celebrate both where the wine has come from and who has made it.

Designing a custom wine label is one of the most popular aspects of our winemaking program. It’s super important that the design includes certain details required by the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau), but even with those regulations you still have a lot of leeway for showing off your personality on the label. There’s no need to fret—we walk you through all the legal requirements before you get started on design so that you know in advance what you can and can’t do on your label.

Label design is a really fun chance for winemaking customers to personalize their wine, whether it’s for their own use, for their wedding, or to give as gifts. Our Fall 2010 harvest customers got really creative and came up with some incredible labels—you can see some examples on the right side of this page!

Once wine has been pressed and placed in a barrel, it needs time to age. Our winemaker Conor takes very good care of each and every barrel of wine that is made at Brooklyn Winery, regularly tasting the wines and running chemical tests (seriously—he has a mad scientist lab in our facility). Once Conor has determined that a wine is ready to be bottled, it’s time for our winemaking customers to come in and get to work.

The wine bottling process is a lot of fun, and it’s even better when a group of people share in the activity. Our winemaking customers will fill the wine bottles using a machine, and then get to cork, cap, and label each bottle by hand. The bottling portion of the process allows customers to experience firsthand the labor involved in actually getting the wine in the bottle. This gives customers an even greater sense of accomplishment, knowing that they literally had a hand in making the wine from start to finish!

And, as with each and every step along the way, customers will get to taste their finished wine during the bottling session. Under the watchful eye and palate of Conor, the grapes will have realized their full potential as a delicious beverage to be shared with friends, family, and loved ones.

So concludes our series of blog posts about the winemaking process. We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about what goes into making wine at Brooklyn Winery, and we would very much like to make wine with you sometime soon. If you’d like to get started making your own wine, click here.