How to clean wine bottles?

Question

Just yesterday my mom's boyfriends house burnt down due to a natural gas leak. He has quite a few wine bottles, and is going to pay me for cleaning them. I only need the outside cleaned, because they are caked with ash. How can I clean them without damaging the label?

Answer 1

Use a slightly damp rag to remove the thickest of the ash, avoiding the areas covered by the label. Next, if you have them, use small paintbrushes to flake away the the ash over the labels. If there is still an overlay, slightly dampen a painbrush to remove the remaining ash on the labels. Do not wipe at the labels with a cloth, as this will cause peeling and tearing. Lastly, wrap the bottle with a clean cloth and lay it on it's side to absorb any moisture still on the labels.

Answer 2

I'm not certain about the answer to your question about cleaning the outside of wine bottles, but if the bottles were full of wine (your use of the term "quite a few wine bottles" vs "quite a few bottles of wine" was confusing), he's got a potentially larger problem than just dirty bottle labels.

Wine that has been "laid down" to keep for any length of time does best when the temp is stable in the upper 50s, and there is little vibration of the bottles.

A house fire that "burnt down due to a natural gas leak" is scary. How long did the bottles endure how much heat? The wine might have been "cooked" and seriously harmed. If that happened to me, I'd probably take the least expensive bottle I recovered, open it and taste it. If I knew what it tasted like *before* the fire, I'd be able to determine if it had been "cooked" or was still OK from not being overheated.

I feel so badly for his loss, and hopefully no one was injured. Most wine can be replaced (even if at a higher cost than original acquisition), people and pets and family heirlooms cannot.

Good luck!

Answer 3

A mild washing up liquid in luke warm water will do