How do they get that nice wax on big bottles????

I mentioned last blog that we have been putting wax on the corks of our 05 magnums of wine. (1500cc bottles). Since we only did 30 of these special edition bottles we were way too small to get the was done professionally. SOOOOOOOO, what to do??? Sandra and I decided to do it ourselves at home. We talked to some of our local experts on wines and got some regular wax used for candles from our local market. We started with a bit of deep red wax but because there was not enough wax for all the bottles we added (that would be me actually) some violet wax that someone had given me as a gift in the past to do fancy sealed letters. (which I of course would never use)... Sandra warned me to not mix in the violet wax into the red as the color would change from deep red to"who knows what color" to quote her. Well, as usual she was corrrect and the final blend color looked light violet but not redish at all. Being one to press on in time of crisis, I insisted it trying some of the mixture of hot melted wax. As you can see, we got a nice "gay friendly" color to the final wax. Oh well, it looks a bit unusual but not a bad color really I say. It appeals to my more artsy side.

How do you do it? Simple really, you just crumble the wax into a small pan deep enough so you can dip the cork into the liquid hot wax deep enough to cover the cork with the wax. We used boiling water and held the smaller pot of wax mixture into the boiling water and stirred until all melted. Meanwhile I cleaned the bottle necks and corks and had them all laid out in the yard. We then rushed outside where Sandra held the hot wax pan at an angle while I carefully dipped the cork end of the bottle into it at a 45 degree angle. I slowly turned the bottle as I pulled it out of the wax and then kept turning the bottle until the wax dripped off the end of the bottle. We did actually use some all dark red wax for some of the bottles. You can see those unlabeled bottles laying on our herb garden wall in one of the photos.

In the other photos you can see a close up of the red wax with unmelted violet chunks added to melt on the burner of our stove. That is Sandra smiling as she says "I told you so" as she dips the magnum into the wax out in our driveway on the back of the car. The last shot shows a nice close up of the lovely "gay"resulting color as the bottle is slowy rotated and pulled back from the pot. All you have to do then is to let the wax dry, clean the bottles and throw on the labels. I plan to bring some of these home to Tennessee for our Christmas use this holiday season. Hopefully no one will comment on the strange color of the wax!!!!!!!!!!

More soon;

Dr JIm-- looking for more dark red wax to use:):):)