Many home winemakers like to reuse their bottles, which makes a whole lot of sense. The only downside is removing the original wine label from the bottle can be a real pain, so knowing how to remove wine labels can really help. So here are directions on how to remove wine labels without going crazy.
1. Add some baking soda to warm water, approximately 8 Tbsp of baking soda per gallon of water.
2. Soak the bottles in the water for at least 30 minutes.
3. We recommend keeping the inside of the bottles clean and dry and not allowing the dirty water to contact it; it’s not necessary but just makes things easier later. To keep everything that comes off the bottle from contaminating the inside of the bottle (and requiring more cleaning afterwards), you’ll want to weigh the bottle down so it doesn’t float. Add warm water to each bottle to keep it upright.
4. After soaking, many labels should be floating around, having been completely separated from the glass. You may need to remove labels by rubbing them off with your fingers or scraping with a razor blade.
5. If there are labels or residue still attached to some bottles, just use some steel wool to easily scour it off. Regular steel wool or soap pads like “SOS” should easily remove labels from stubborn bottles.
6. If this doesn’t work, we recommend just throwing that bottle out. If you can’t remove the labels easily with the baking soda solution then it will require a solvent, and there are many different kinds of adhesives that require different solvents to dissolve them. It’s certainly personal preference, but the added time, effort, and environmental impact may not be worth the hassle.
7. Rinse the outside of the bottles, and clean them as usual when your ready to bottle your wine.
Now You’re ready for our removable and reusable labels!
Once you have clean bottles you can use our removable and reusable labels so you never have to scrub another bottle again. Our removable labels peel off easily and are classified as “clean remove”, meaning they leave no adhesive residue behind. The key benefit of our removable labels is they peel off in one piece with no ripping or tearing, and leave absolutely no adhesive on the glass or aluminum. This removes the frustration of dealing with sticky residue, and also means you don’t have to use solvents or wash and scrub to get it off.
Some removable labels use a light adhesive that provides just enough strength to keep them fastened until you peel off the label, or others use “static cling” to keep them attached to the surface. Our labels use a combination of adhesive and cling to provide a label that’s appropriate for a wide range of uses; it sticks to almost anything but comes off when you want it to. And our removable labels are perfect for glass bottles, plastic carboys, and aluminum kegs. They will also work for cold storage and long soaks in ice water (perfect for beers in a cooler or champagne on ice).
They’re not just for beverages like mead, cider, and sodas, but can be used for other things like honey, jams and jellies, or kombucha. They can also be used in product manufacturing like removable price tags on glass picture frames, or information or protection labels that customers will peel off after purchase.
This means they are reusable labels as well, sometimes referred to as repositionable labels. These labels can make home winemaking and home brewing so much easier. They have a removable adhesive and do not rip. So once your bottle is empty, just peel off and put it on another bottle with no washing or scrubbing.
You can choose to leave the old labels on empty bottles until you need them, but you can also save the liner the labels originally came on. That way when you finish a bottle of wine, beer, mead, or whatever, you just peel the label off and put it on the liner ready for the next time you need it.