when to label

Should labels and shrink wrap be applied before bottle aging or afterwards?

I don't think it really matters.

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Bottle BEFORE the point at which you forget what wine is in which bottles! :-)

I did that once -- bottled 3 batches of red wine the same evening, but didn't bother to label them because I knew I'd remember which cases where which. A month or so later I discovered, to my chagrin, that my memory was not quite as good as I had thought it was.

I had to taste a bottle from each case to determine which was which, so it wasn't a total loss ...

No

You are so right. I still have some mystery wine that I forgot to label several years ago. Label when you bottle!

Ray

Corks don't breathe per se, the seal improves with time after initial insertion. That's why you stand bottles up initially, to let the air you pumped into the wine when the cork was inserted leak out as it equalizes the pressure. Once the cork re-expands it's sealed. That only applies to real corks.

Capsules were originally made of lead and were used to keep the mold down when wine was stored in damp cold areas. Now it's mostly esthetics's, the bottle just looks better with a capsule.

Joe

Thanks Joe You answered my question! My main concern was whether the capsule helped fight mold on the cork during aging. Also whether the label would develop mold after a few years. Unfortunately as someone else mentioned it is easy to mix-up the batches if you don't label at bottling. I guess more importantly is the humidity level in the wine cellar. Although it is no easy task to maintain the humidity at around 70%.

You can mark the bottle, or the cork, or the capsule instead of a label to prevent that. It's faster and it works pretty well. I use short pieces of mailing labels with codes like C 03 (for Cab 2003) attached to the top of the capsule. It's actually better than a label that way because I don't have to pull the bottle out of the rack to see which wine it is.

Pp

sometimes the simplest ideas are the best thanks Joe