A ten day vacation looms. The wine tank can’t come with me. It’s time to bottle it. That or turn our fridge into a cellar.

Bottling my first and second wines required crafty recycling. This would be no different. Once again, over thirty bottles have somehow, magically aggregated in our living room. But now they are dusty. Cue the bathtub wash scene:

I let my bottles dry.

To complete the pseudo-virtuous circle of modern wine manipulation, I open a box that holds my new filter. Made in South Essex, UK and shipped from Ohio, this filter would fit perfectly into Ed Wood alien invasions. Its two plastic saucers join and seal frames and a dense filter pad between them. Once assembled, I attach the tube to the wine, grab my camera and start the inevitable spiel:

The clamp’s click stops the flow, which makes it easy to move on to the following thirty bottles.

Once every bottle is full, I check the tank.

Ideally, the wine should have settled for a few more rackings. The two percentages of residual sugar are just begging to ferment if any yeast snuck in. If that makes a sparkling wine in the methode ancestrale, oh well. Ten days of vacation is too many. Achilles had to be shot in the heal. My wine had to meet bottle.

So, how did the filter fair?

Result.

One might wonder how the wine survived, after the filter removed so much sediment.

But it is nearing midnight. I have not packed for our trip. And I have yet to cork the bottles and put them away…