DIY - Four Down!

Matt and I got started on the wine bottles this weekend! We have been "brewing" our own wine now for about 3 years. We really like it, and usually the wine turns out pretty good. We really didn't want to do a favor - we were going to just do charity donations (in case you're interested, we would have donated to Shriners Hospitals for Children of Philadelphia; I used to work there and it means the world to me). But then somehow we came up with this idea, and we both loved it.

So we decided to do Cabernet Sauvignon. We've made it in the past and it's come out well, so we thought it would be a good bet to try it again. We had to make 2 batches, in order to make enough 187 ml bottles for everyone on our guest list. We certainly don't think everyone will show up, but at least we have enough just in case they do. We had to do one batch at a time, and we finished bottling the second batch last weekend.

Say you: What does it mean, to "brew" your own wine?
Say me: Well, I say "brew" because it's not as complicated as it sounds...

First step is that you go to your local home brewing supplier. Ours is in Montgomeryville. So you go and get this big box of juice, which also comes with some of the other things you need. The box (I think) tells you what else to buy, but I would highly recommend talking to someone at the store to confirm stuff. The process can get a little overwhelming. So anyway, you basically take this box of juice, and put it into a big plastic jug, along with some other things (yeast, stabilizers, etc...Matt does all of this) and let it sit for a couple of weeks. Then you rack it (meaning you transfer it) into a big 6 gallon carboy, stir in a few other ingredients, and let it sit again. A few weeks later, you bottle it. It's fairly simple.

For our wedding favors, we did 187 ml bottles. Usually, we use full-size wine bottles, but for this purpose, we didn't think full wine bottles were appropriate. So we bottled into the 187 ml bottles (which, by the way, was hard...and messy!). We weren't able to use corks for the little bottles, so we ended up capping them with beer bottle caps.

We went to Kinko's today to print out the labels we made from our engagement photos.

We also made ingredients labels for the back of the bottles. I got the idea for the personalized barcode from a poster on Weddingbee.

We had also gotten ribbon to tie on the them, but when we started tying it into bows, it looked really stupid. So Matt played around with it, and came up with tying the ribbon like a tie! It looks so. good!

I cannot wait to see these displayed on our reception tables!!

(all photos are mine!)