In order to do something different each week of the year, I have a list of challenges to undertake...

Sunday 28 July 2013

Week 30 - Re-arrange the Wine Rack

When I started making wine, I used to put the bottles in any old spare corner in the garage. In hindsight, that wasn't that sensible - with the car taking up most of the room, the floor space for wine bottles is limited; and I think we can all see the dangers of me bumbling around in the dark recesses of a garage strewn with bottles.

So I put up a shelf and a wine rack and devised a simple system of putting the bottles which had been made longest at the bottom, the newer bottles added at the top.

When I'd drunk the entire bottom row, I moved everything down one, like a giant game of Tetris. The system meant that I could just grab the bottle lowest on the rack and not have to fiddle around pulling bottles out to find the next in line to be drunk.

This worked really well as long as I keep all my wines for the same amount of time (a year) before drinking. A problem arises, though, when some wines can be drunk before 12 months (tea bag wines in - say - three months) and some need longer (parsnip wine benefits from 2 years in the bottle) - so the little sticky dot I put on the top of each cork so I can see at a glance what it is, and the 'month made' don't actually reflect when I can drink the stuff.


So this week's Challenge has been to get all the bottles out of the rack, replace the sticky dot with one that gives the month to be drunk not the month made, then put them all back in the rack in order of drinking date.

It's a little thing, but it's so much easier to just be able to grab the lowest bottle on the rack and know it's ready to go, rather than squeezing past the car and having to take the torch out to read the labels until I find one that's had it's 'maturing' time.


So that's my week 30 Challenge done - cheers!

4 comments:

  1. That is very practical now. As hubby and I don't drink and are hoping to sell soon, I have been going through our wine and most of it will have to be go, as it is definitely passed it use by date. Hubby used to get them as gifts when he drove Tour buses.

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    1. I didn't think that wine had a use by date - don't they just mature and get better? None of mine has hung around long enough for me to prove that thought out, however!

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    2. Yes, they do have use by dates, espcecially white.

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    3. Well, live and learn,eh?

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