Removal of Wine Labels?
My husband and I are huge wine drinkers, and consume many bottles over the calendar year. We were thinking of starting a “wine scrapbook” of all of the wines we have tried. My trouble is, is that I do not know how to successfully remove the labels from the bottles. Is there a proper way to do this without completely running the label? Please help! Thank you in advance.
Tagged with: calendar year • labels • scrapbook • wine drinkers • wines
Filed under: All Things Wine
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i’ve heard that a blow dryer will ease the hold of the glue.
i would think that the water method would dissolve some of the paper labels.
The easiest way to remove the label intact is to submerge the bottle in a bucket of water overnight. Some take longer but most will release in that time. If you start with hot water it seems to speed the process along. This works with labels affixed with water-soluble glue, but does not work well with the plastic labels; they usually have to be removed with a razor blade. If you intend to reuse the bottles add a couple ounces of bleach to the water to kill off the bacteria in them, but remember to rinse them before reusing them.
Good luck and enjoy!
best way is to get a b owl of milk and kitchen paper. wet the kitchen papoer with the milk and rub the label till it comes lose. apply quite alot of milk to the tissue and the label will come completely free without tearing
Check out likn below, it gives you many other options, but this is the one that works for us, becuase we already had the equipment. Good drinking:)
Art’s Soaking Method
Equipment: One of those tall, Igloo water jugs that you use on picnics or sporting events, tall enough to hold a wine bottle … Ivory Detergent … paper towels .. wax paper .. single edged razor blade .. heavy book.
fill the jug with warm water and 1-2 drops of Ivory Detergent (we’ve found the pure soap detergents seem to work the best )
fill the wine bottle itself with VERY hot water and immerse it in the jug
After about 30 minutes, you’ll either have the label floating in the jug or loosely clinging to the bottle. If it’s not off by then, we usually know it will take anywhere from 2 hours to overnight for the soaking to work.
If, after the long or short soak, you find the label has still not come off … take the bottle out of the jug, fill it again with very warm water and cram an old cork back into and dry the bottle well .. try to get the label as dry as possible.
Laying the bottle on a towel (to steady it) we use a single edged razor blade an start working on the side of the label (following the curve of the bottle) scraping the label off. We do a little from one side and then from the other, working back and forth until it is off.
Once you have the label off .. put it between a couple of paper towels to first blot up as much moisture as possible (BE CAREFUL) .. some of the new glues are of the "peel and stick" variety and will stick to anything. When we find one of these, we take some plain white paper and press the label down onto it and trim around the label.
We then place the label on a piece of waxed paper with paper towels on top of it and weight it down with a heavy book.