How wonderful for you, Jon! I can only imagine what a lift of spirit it will be to be back at Mottisfont, doing purposeful work that you do so well. Easy does it, though - and expect those half days to tire you out at first. I love your garden in winter. That's the first time I've seen you post a photo of it not all lush and green or blooming like crazy. Lori is right: it is a fairyland all year round. :-)

Here's a recipe I tried once for dandelion wine. It turned out okay, a little syrupy, but fine. No one could really get over the ick factor of drinking something that had been sitting out on the counter for months, though. Dandelion Blossom Wine The late Edna Lewis was a Southern-cooking legend. She grew up in a small farming community in Virginia. In The Taste of Country Cooking (Alfred A. Knopf 1990), she wrote that in the very early spring, she would see her neighbors picking dandelions. For winemaking, she wrote, they had to be picked before noon. After that, the blossoms would close up tight. The wine was drunk at breakfast. This is adapted from her recipe. 1 gallon open dandelion blossoms 5 quarts boiling, noncarbonated water 3 1/2 pounds sugar Pick dandelion blossoms far away from polluted areas, in clear, open fields. Have at hand a good, clean stone crock or Pyrex container, because you will be pouring boiling water over the blossoms and a glass jar will crack and spoil your blossoms. Pick over the blossoms. See to it that there are no spiders or bugs in them. Rinse. Drop the blossoms into the crock and pour the boiling water over them. Cover with a clean white napkin and let stand for three days where it's not too cold. Strain through a thin, clean, odor-free cloth into a clean glass jar. Add the sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Cover again with a clean cloth and leave in the kitchen in a warm, draft-free place for three weeks. Then strain into clean, dry jars, filling up to the top. Tie a clean cloth over the mouth of each jar and leave to finish fermenting, which will take about four months, or until the wine stops being effervescent. Then strain carefully into clean bottles, leaving behind any sediment that settles on the bottom. Fill the bottles nearly full and cork tightly. Store in a dry, dark place.

If I was doing a ceiling, I would get some thin plywood sheets, glue to corks to them, then screw them to the ceiling, rather than trying to stick corks up there one by one like Michelangelo doing a cork version of the Sistine Chapel. It sounds cool though! I've cut them in half using a bandsaw. Clamp a piece of PVC pipe just bigger than the corks, to the saw table, with the blade centered on the outlet of the pipe. Shove corks into it and halves come out the other end.

I think that it's fine for lighter colored wines to be bottled in dark glass. It gives them more protection from damaging sunlight and, as you say, you can always put it in a decanter for people to see the wine. Personally, all of my wines and meads go into dark bottles since I want people to focus on the wine when it's in the drinking glass where it can really shine and be appreciated. Congratulations on the blackberry wine! When it's well done, blackberry is very tasty and the color is beautiful. Fizzy while you're bottling can be a couple of things ... either coming out of the racking tube into the bottle very fast and splashing around inside the bottle (which isn't too bad) or the wine is not done fermenting (which is only good if you're intending on it and using champagne bottles). I'd move one of the bottles to a warm spot for a few days and then open carefully to see if it's settled down or if you're making bombs. A little harsh at bottling time is probably not too much to worry about depending on how long you've bulk aged the wine - a lot of that harshness will hopefully go away with a few months in teh bottle. I've never used screw top bottles with a cork and I haven't seen it recommended. I think it's something to do with the design of the neck on the screw tops and possibly their strength to hold a cork but I don't remember exactly. I haven't bought labels in a long while - I just grab a graphics package like MS-Publisher or Photoshop and create them there. Then I print them on normal paper, cut to size and attach to the bottles with a glue stick. Works well and it's pretty fast if you have a little help. For the vin ordinaire that I just serve at the house for friends, I'm really lazy and just write what's in the bottle using a silver or gold glass marking pen from Staples. I have to get brewing again this weekend - I've just been overwhelmed at the though of racking 15 batches to free up some glass but the thought of starting a mandarin orange metheglin and some cyser in season is getting really exciting. Good luck with your batches.