exploding wine bottles

I had a coworker ask me today what we put in our wine, because He had a bottle explode in his house. Also, last night I uncorked a bottle and it smoked and fizzed like champange. We are using liquer bottles and wine bottles. The one that exploded was in an old whiskey bottle.

Could this be a case of some bottles not getting cleaned well enough before bottling?

Any ideas?

This is a sweet cherry wine that used wild yeast

its probably not done fermenting or it restarted when you bottled it,try bulk aging it with an air lock next time instead of bottle aging.

Liquor bottles are not designed to hold pressure. They are really thin compared to a champagne bottle which is designed to hold pressure.

Keep in mind none of the OP's bottles are champange bottles, neither wine bottles or liquor bottles are designed to hold pressure.

It seems safe to say your cherry wine is still fermenting. I see a couple options:
1. Uncork, pour into carboy, purge headspace with CO2 if you have the equipment
2. Bottle pasteurization. This is something I've not done but I've seen some threads around, you will have to do a bit of research, but in a nut shell it involves heating the bottles and killing off any critters in there. Here is a link to get you started if that interests you: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/results-my-first-bottle-pasteurization-experiment-121101/

Thanks for the fast responses,

The majority of the cherry wine is still in barrels, we've just been bottling a little bit along the way. We started bottling and drinking in Nov. , havn't had an issue until now. I guess for some reason fermentation started back up. either in barrels or in bottles. we have about 400 gallons. So we are not racking and bottling all at once.

Just got off the phone with another guy who has been making this exact same cherry wine for years and years. He said his wine is also getting carbonated and that the yeast must have started working again. He also said that it has never happened to him before.

Must be some crazy yeast.

I am sure that that is a typo and you meant to say 200 gallons on this very public forum. Wine making is perfectly legal with out license or permit as long as you do not make more than 200 gallons per household per year. I doubt agents from the ATF read this forum but I thought you may want to fix that typo just in case.

There is more than one household(s) involved

sounds great, just wanted to give you a heads up so you didn't run in to problems

Sounds like the wine was still sweet because it wasn't done fermenting. If that's the case, usually the corks will pop out before the bottle explodes. But not always.

I'd either uncork and stick them all in a carboy to finish, or expect many more bombs.

Well I just thought of something else. We have been drinking this wine for about 3 months now(without problems). recently I started blending the wine when I bottle to acheive a different tase. Some barrels are oak and some are not. (I like the oak flavor but a little bit more subtle) Also we varied the amt. of sugar in some barrels. Soooo.

I am guessing that when I blended and bottled, it caused fermentation to restart.

It could easily be the blending, it could also simply be the act of bottling. I had a batch of Raspberry that sat in the secondary for 10 years. When I bottled I didn't bother checking the SG because I figured it was "done" but in actuality it had stuck some where along the line and bottling it was all that was needed to kickstart the fermentation back up. Fortunately for me I caught it before I had bottle bombs.

black to the blending where any of the wines blended, dry?? if so the yeast in those would be adapted very well to the wine you are fermenting and mixing that dry wine with a sweet wine of the same basic brew would be like putting a log on the fire.

Am I the only one that wants to see pictures of all these barrels?!?

EDIT: typo

Wow. I could never wait 10 years.(too impatient) Well, I guess from now on I will be blending into a carboy and let it sit for awhile before bottling. Thanks everyone for the comments , and I will try to get some picture uploaded.

rnewhouse57 said:

Wow. I could never wait 10 years.(too impatient)

Click to expand...

The ten years was not by design. In one summer my brother and I started over 50 gallons all in one gallon batches then we got busy with life and a little overwhelmed by all that was there and never did anything with it. By the time we got to, half of it had gone bad, BUT the half that was good was really good!!!