33 replies to this topic

[chuckie68]

I found a way to get all the bottles I need with very little effort. I just put a sign on my office door saying I want empty wine bottles. I've been getting about 10 bottles a week..

[GerardVineyard]

Doesn't get easier than that, when the bottles come to you.

[saramc]

Around my neck of the woods it is common to find empty wine bottles are flea markets and yard sales for $1 each---and people pay that...for a USED every day basic bottle.

My newest source: Since I wanted non-wine bottles for SkeeterPee and mead and I don't want to pay for them. So, I contacted the little, and very busy, Mexican restaurant in my town and asked them for all their "Mexican" coca cola bottles & their empty Jarritos bottles. They are also saving an assortment of beer bottles for me. They double rinse them and then stash them in the big plastic bin I provide for them. They even call me when the bin is full. They told me if I want ALL the empty bottles, regardless of what type of bottle, or any other bottle types, just let them know. Otherwise they throw them away. I made the arrangement last week and they called a little bit ago to tell me the bin is full, come & get them.

[Ticino Vintner]

I raid the recycle bin which is full of literally hundreds of wine bottles every week.

[waynes world winery]

I've gotten family members trained to bring me cobalt blue bottles...they have learned that I repay them with wine...in one of my old green or brown bottles!

[Minnesotaris]

I found a high end restaurant with recycle bins that I raid (with permission) in the early morning before work. Got about 700 bottles in about three months. Lots of de-labeling and finding where to store them in the house.
I also have a few wine stores that save some of their bottles after tastings. The last one gives me a reason to visit the wine store too; love that part.

[croat]

I bartend and cater weddings - so every year I have many times to get as many as 100 in a day.

[DaveD]

Freecycle, a Yahoo group is where I get most of mine. I have built a relationship with a few people who give me about 100 a year. (After getting about 700, I'm pretty much done).

I just posted an ad and there were many people who wished to give away their bottles out of environmental concern.

[kendall]

I may be a little late, but co-workers and family members work best for me. I just give them boxes and they bring me back boxes filled with bottles. I am not picky about the bottles yet. but I love the intresting shapes I get.

[jerzy_s]

Our local brew shop also provides alcohol for weddings and they have a wine tasting club.
They have several hundred of empty bottle cases sitting in the back they want to get rid of, so cleaning, organizing and de-labeling them is the only effort here.

Now, getting friends to bring you the cobalt blue bottles - that's a great idea.

[carl38]

I have a buddy that works at the recycle center( High class Dump) Gets me about 10 bottles a week.

[winesupplyfetcher]

Some of the wineries that have special party days or picnic areas often allow people to haul off empties.

We bottled yesterday and I am always amazed at how we continue to have to replenish our bottle stores. Between sharing wine, and not keeping up with what Wade makes every year, we find ourselves scrounging for more bottles at least once a year. We started out by climbing in the recycling bins (Wade did...) in Washington State (a little gross at first) to now having people bring them to our house. We have about ten cases of bottles we want to take to recycling because they aren't what we want (people bring by the strangest stuff!). An Amish fellow asked Wade would he please take a few boxes of empty bottles off his hands that had been in his barn for years. They were mostly hard liquor bottles but Wade took them anyway to be polite. I think most of the ones we got from the Amish fellow are going to recycling eventually. It's taking the time to get there that is the difficult part. The unusual ones are cool, but it is easier to store bottles that are alike. We did get a few really old strange bottles from the Amish neighbor. He'd probably be really embarrassed to think anyone might know he had them. They were on his place when he bought it, if I remember what he said. it's been a couple years now and they're still in our barn!

It seems like we always have more of the kinds we don't prefer, so it is always more difficult to come up with our favorites. We should bottle batches using both kinds: bottles we want to keep and bottles we don't. That way we could give away the ones we want to cull out of our bottles and eventually have less of the ones we don't like. We got a bunch of cases of 6.99 bottles that aren't very stackable a few years back. If we'd use them for every batch we make, we could have one area of the wine room that was for storing wine to give away - in those bottles. Most people don't care too much what bottle they get their wine in, but of course it's always nice to give it away in the loveliest bottles, too.

We have blue bottles, but haven't bottled in the blues since around 2006. I'm not sure why. Maybe we need to trade for blues - very good idea! I think we don't have enough to bottle more than a small batch in them, or else we've got some of them stored out of sight and hard to find. Probably gave too many of them away.

[analog_kidd]

We have a trash / recycle center here in town. I go there all the time to take trash, but the other day I decided to go around to the side where the paper and glass recycles are collected. They have huge bins for collecting glass, and they are sorted by color. If the bin is nearly empty, you can't reach the bottom, and there is lots of broken glass in it. I went to Home Depot and bought one of those sticks with a trigger handle on one end and a claw on the other, and I can grab the empties without getting cut.

[Climber]

I need to get one of those grabber things. I get mine out of a recycling dumpster also, and sometimes the bottle you really want is just out of your reach. It's easy to get carried away when you see the bin clear full of lots of bottles!

[Wade's Wines]

Free screw-tops, just come to my house and we'll load you up cases of them. All given me by friends.