When there are deposits in your wine after you have bottled and you decide that you need to uncork and re-settle the wine prior to bottling (again), here is a great tool to help you get the wine back into carboys while reducing the exposure to air.
Click on image to start
The device in the photo is simply a plastic stopper with holes to pass a narrow tube through and to let wine flow out. The plastic tubing is 1/4″ OD food grade flexible material. My stopper was made from an insert that came in a bottle of commercial wine with three ΒΌ holes drilled, followed by a bit of Exacto knife carving. A plastic stopper with two holes drilled should work similarly. It serves to transfer wine under CO2 to protect it from oxygen exposure.
Procedure (see video below):
1. Fill the receiving vessel with CO2.
2. Uncork bottle(s) of wine to be transferred.
3. Put stopper into a bottle so tube goes right to the bottom. (Don’t push stopper all the way in as it can be too hard to get out again if you do)
4. Invert bottle so tube and stopper go into receiving container neck. As the wine flows in then CO2 sucks from the receiver into the wine bottle protecting the wine from oxygen. Sometimes wine will suck into the tube and slow things down; if so, remove stopper and blow tube free of wine.
Contributed by Sandy Kirk