Best practice for moving wine out of top-off bottles?

[TkmLinus]

Greetings!
Normally, after racking from the primary fermenter I fill up my smaller secondary and have enough to fill an additional wine bottle which I fit with an airlock. Is there an easy way to siphon the wine out of the bottle(My autosiphon is much too big for the wine bottle opening), or is it ok just to pour it in the fermenter? What is the best way to move wine/mead out of wine bottles when used for topping off fermenters after racking? Is there a way to rack from one wine bottle to another without just using a funnel and carefully pouring from one to the other? I have just poured it in the past, but was wondering if there was a better way to do it with less contact with oxygen.
Thanks in advance and thanks for all the wisdom and great recipes on this site!

 

[Yooper]

I use small siphon tubing if it's more than a tiny bit to move.

 

[TkmLinus]

I use small siphon tubing if it's more than a tiny bit to move.

Just wondering, what method do you use to start the siphon? I don't know of any way to start a siphon except for sucking on the end of the tube(and autosiphon of course)...
Thanks again!

 

[Yooper]

I've been making wine for nearly 30 years, and had aquariums as well, so I'm proficient with siphoning. It's easy. You can practice with some tubing and water. Just fill the tubing with water, and plug both ends with your fingertips. Then, lower one end to where you want it to go, and stick the other end in some liquid and then remove your finger. It does take practice, but once you do it it a few times, you won't forget it.

 

[Coffee49]

Being raised in the 70's siphoning was taught on every block, if one can siphon gasoline any liquid under that is easy

 

[cottonwoodks]

I've been making wine for nearly 30 years, and had aquariums as well, so I'm proficient with siphoning. It's easy. You can practice with some tubing and water. Just fill the tubing with water, and plug both ends with your fingertips. Then, lower one end to where you want it to go, and stick the other end in some liquid and then remove your finger. It does take practice, but once you do it it a few times, you won't forget it.

But when you're siphoning wine, you wouldn't want to fill the tubing with water, or would you? And if not water, then how to get the wine in there?

 

[bsc_so_cal]

I've switched from using wine bottles to using wine box bags for my topper. These work great for variable volumes as you can remove the extra air as needed from the bags. But the one thing I've learned about topper wine - is to try to minimize the amount of sediment that it has. That way - pouring from either a wine bottle or wine box bag is straight-forward.

 

[FromZwolle]

just spitballing ideas here, but couldn't you throw a drilled stopper on some tubing and force a pump needle through the stopper and force co2 through that to make pressure transfers from any small necked vessel?