I'm fairly new to this, but a friend who works at an upscale restaurant has been bringing me about a dozen bottles every week or two for the past few months. I start by rinsing and filling the bottles with hot water. I stand them in the laundry sink, and then fill it with hot water and let them soak. Some of the labels fall off by themselves. Most, I can scrape off with my thumb nail, after soaking for an hour or so, and some won't come off at all. For the really stubborn labels, I use a razor scraper and peel it off in strips. To remove the remaining glue, I lightly scrub the outside of the bottle with an S.O.S. pad. This removes 99% of the glues used on most bottles. For those that are really stubborn, I spray it with citrus based Goo Gone. That stuff is awesome. I then scrub as before using the steel wool S.O.S. pad, and the Goo Gone quickly disolves the glue and it simply rinses away. This has been working very well for me, and I now have about 125 empty bottles in the basement awaiting my first creations to finish.