Hi Sueflay, Welcome to the Painting forum. You might want to check the past few issues of Painting magazine. They've been doing some wine/vineyard patterns. Try checking their website at www.paintingmag.com. Also look for painting books at www.artistsclub.com Good luck in your search and be sure to come back and post pics of your current or past projects. We always love to see what everyone is painting. Luvs

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.

Sake is not wine. Wine is fermented fruit juice. Sake is made from dried grain, which has no juice. More like beer. But the question was good. W/out more info, it is hard to recommend something. If you have been drinking wine from KY and OH, you are drinking pretty sweet stuff probably. Most of what people would consider "fine" wine is not made that way, but there are exceptions. Sweetness generally comes from unfermented sugars in the juice. The sweetness in the local wines may come from added sugar as well - who knows. But in general, it is more common to find sweeter reds than whites. So if you are looking at imported wines, you can look at many German rieslings. (Riesling is a grape.) These are categorized by the sugar in the grapes at harvest, from QBA and Kabinett (less sugar) to Auslese and Beerenauslese and trokenbeerenauslese (more sugar and MUCH more costly.) Germany has had great harvests over the past few years, so it is hard to really go wrong. Here are some that are available now, all for $20 - $33 or so and all of which I just bought. (Spatlese is an intermediate sugar level that should suit you perfectly.) 2005 Robert Weil Spatlese 2005 Weingart Riesling, Sch.Fur.Spatlese 2005 Haag, Fritz Riesling, Bra.Juf.Spatlese 2005 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese 2005 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese 2005 Donnhoff Riesling, Schl.Fel.Spatlese 2005 Donnhoff Qba 2005 Gunderloch Nackenheimer Rothenberg Spat 2005 Gunderloch Nackenheimer Rothenberg Auslese 2005 Muller Catoir Spatlese But keep in mind that the sugar at harvest does NOT always equate to the sugar after fermentation. THose are 2 different things. You can pick low sugar, not ferment completely dry, and have a sweeter wine than if you picked at high sugar but fermented it all into alcohol. Mostly, but not 100% of the time, spatlese would be kind of sweet. And if you can't get any of those on this list, just find a decent store and ask for a good, not dry, riesling. Hard to go wrong these days. Just remember that "dry" means no residual sugar in the wine, so it won't be sweet. Gwertztraminer is another grape that is often rather sweet. It also has a beautiful floral nose. The rieslings can smell and taste like tart apples and pineapples, the gwertz can smell like lychees and taste a bit like them too. There are good rieslings and gwertz's made in the US, in Michigan, NY, and Washington, for example. Many are likely to have some residual sugar, but they are not as neatly categorized as the Germans. If you were to select a grape from the eastern US in fact, I would suggest that you select a white rather than a red, for which I would go to California or Washington. And eventually you will look at some less sweet wines too! Happy hunting.

After you posted the first thread I tried to buy the larger size vase pic and it was sold out then. I just assumed you had a store locally that carried it. I could had saved you some time by telling you that. Some of the alternstives you are posting are also some that I've seen myself while looking for art. They are nice but I'm still stuck on your first choice. So far the trees above this would be my 2nd choice...but I would keep checking back to see if Kirkland has the vases again. :)