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