I’ve gone and messed up “Date Night” with a Bruce Cockburn concert tonight. We’ll do it tomorrow night instead. My pasta dish last night was a success, despite the damage to the kitchen. I apparently don’t have the same neatness gene as my wife, so “Cooking Night” is not always as relaxing as she’d like.

Days are now often defined by the evening activities, since mornings and afternoons are typically uneventful and tend to run together. I’m currently trying to watch all the remaining Ken Burns documentaries that are only available at the library. The Lewis & Clark expedition was exhausting, Mark Twain a.k.a.Samuel Clemens led a somewhat tragic life, while The Shakers were unique human beings. Thomas Jefferson, The Dust Bowl, and Cancer are next on my agenda.

This afternoon I’m headed to a friend’s house to “rack” wine. As I understand, we’ll be moving the contents of this year’s harvest from glass and plastic carboys into wooden barrels as the aging process continues. The French word is Soutirage, the Germans call it Abstich, while it’s travaso in Italian. It’s also known as filtering or fining. According to experts, the idea is to siphon the liquid into a new vessel, using gravity rather than a pump, which can be disruptive to the wine. Racking allows clarification and aids in stabilization, and is repeated several times during the aging of wine. I’ve heard of racking my brain, racking billiard balls, racking up victories, and even shopping for a wine rack, but I was not familiar with this particular procedure. Rack ’em, Danno!

The other thing that I’ve learned about wine is the labeling process. As I continue to provide slave labor to our friend’s hobby vineyard, one of the benefits is free wine. Every time I go over to their home, I typically pick up another case of bottles, while returning the empties. I always try to be helpful by cleaning the bottles that I take, and also make an effort to add to their stock of empty bottles from other wines that we drink. These “dead soldiers” are eventually refilled, so the recycling process can continue. When I take wine from their home, I usually ask for unlabeled bottles, so I don’t have to go through the trouble of removing these labels. With wines that we buy at other vineyards or stores, de-labeling the bottles is a cumbersome task. I soak them in hot water and baking soda to dissolve the glue, and then scrape off the labels with a razor blade. I finish by wiping each bottle with an adhesive remover. In the process, I usually end up nicking myself with the blade as I work. Another casualty came when I got distracted and forgot about the hot water filling the sink where I was soaking the bottles. By the time I remembered, I had flooded the laundry room, bathroom, and study. Oops! After spending a lot of time taking off labels over the past couple years, I’ve come to discover that the more established brands use a stronger glue on their labels, so it takes a lot more effort to remove them. I now enjoy a wine that tastes good, but also requires little time in removing the label.