Wine Dogs Make Wine: Lesson 6 (Put a Cork in It... We're Done!)

Three Fox Vineyards
Delaplane, VA

It's bottle and cork time! No surprise, Munchkin and Pomeroy have become teacher's pets, and in the last class, John uses our wine for the demonstration.

Everybody gets to taste "Wine Dog" wine!

Munchkin, ever the perfectionist, feared the team had "over-oaked."

Pomeroy assured her that it just needs time in a bottle for the flavors to blend and intensify.

And the classmates agree, giving Wine Dogs two paws up.

One minor issue -- the wine is a little short on mouth-feel. Additives to the rescue, this time in the form of a jammy substance called exberry, which is basically grapeskin. Mixed in 20 grams and it's ready to hit the bottle.

Once again, we set up a wine-pumping assembly line, with Munchkin and Pomeroy supervising the bottling process.

Uncle Jeff quickly learned it takes great precision to fill the bottles just to the neck.

He did a pretty good job... most of the time. Fortunately, Munchkin was on hand to take care of the spillage. In this case, it turns out the wine isn't really good to the last drop. We left the residue behind, but ended up with 28 bottles.

To close them up, we used a manual corking machine, which squeezes the cork then jams it in. John did everyone's bottles. Quite a workout!

Then over to the foil machine (there's one for that, too). Slip the cap on top of the bottle, and slide it into a really hot machine. Uncle Jeff never did get the in-out motion right, but everyone else seemed to master capping.

All in all, the Wine Dogs are proud of their first vintage. The cabernet is rich and complex, and goes down smooth. John predicts that when we serve it at our paw-ty, our guests will think we got the wine in France. We'll tell 'em it was bottled in a little town just outside of Paris... Paris, Virginia that is.

Cheers to all our classmates... keep up your wining ways!