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Winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels Texas

January 12, 2021 by Jill Leave a Comment

Have you always wanted to make your own wine? In New Braunfels Texas, you can! We’re sharing our experience about winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels Texas.

Table of Contents

  • Winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels Texas
  • If ever there was a year to make your own wine…
  • Why would you make your own wine?
  • Winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels – Start to Finish
    • Step 1:
    • Step 2: 
    • Step 3: 
  • Other things to know

Winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels Texas

My husband and I have been fans of Water 2 Wine in downtown New Braunfels for a few years now. We live outside of San Antonio and with the fun (not) South Texas traffic, it’s easier to go into New Braunfels than it is to San Antonio for dining, shopping, and other entertainment. San Antonio is great but we love that small town feel we get in New Braunfels. 

Water 2 Wine is a boutique winery on Seguin Avenue. They do not grow their own grapes but most of their wine is made on site. They also have a small food menu and a really fun atmosphere. Whether you’re interested in winemaking or not, definitely put this on your list of places to stop next time you’re in New Braunfels, which is a great day trip location from San Antonio or Austin. 

If ever there was a year to make your own wine…

…2020 was that year. Every time we go to Water 2 Wine, my husband and I have looked at and talked about the winemaking option. For one reason or another, we’ve always decided not to do it. Until 2020. 

Making wine at New Braunfels Water 2 Wine

We made and bottled our own wine! This machine is a heat source that binds the foil to tab to the cork. I never really thought about how all this stuff gets on the bottle but I know now.

2020 was such a…um, memorable…year, we decided it deserved its own private label wine. We decided to take the leap in mid-October and brought our wine home just before Christmas. 

Why would you make your own wine?

Yes, you can buy wine at the grocery store so why would you want to spend time, money and effort bottling your own stuff?

Short answer: Because its fun. And because wine. 

Your batch of wine will yield 24-28 bottles. These are great wedding favors, Christmas gifts or gifts/favors/prizes to commemorate any other type of life event. 

We made our 2020 Train Fire just because but these would be fun wedding favors or gifts to commemorate a special holiday. Labels are fully customizable.

This can also be a fun team-building event for small groups or just something fun to do with your core groups of friends or favorite people. This would be really fun to do with another wine-loving couple. 

We did our batch “just because” and although we’ve given some away as gifts, we did it just for the fun of the experience and to commemorate making it through a very hard year with our family, health and sanity (questionable) intact. That said, I can see us doing it again and I already have a working title for our 2021 vintage, although we’ll have to see how the year plays out. 

Wine making - bucket of chardonnay

Somehow, I don’t like to think about my wine starting out as something that started out in a five gallon bucket like pickles in the fast food restaurant I worked at when I was a teen but here we are.

Winemaking at Water 2 Wine New Braunfels – Start to Finish

You’ll want to allow at least two months between the time you make your wine and then time you need to have it ready. If you’re bottling wine for a wedding or other big event, I recommend starting three months in advance, just to make sure. 

Step 1:

Your first step will be to decide what kind of wine you want to make. Water 2 Wine has a large selection at various price points and you can taste different wines to see what suits your taste. After you’ve decided on a wine, you’ll mix your wine under the guidance of one of the wine experts at Water 2 Wine. 

This is the sciency-part. This gizmo measures the amount of alcohol in your wine at the start – you know, important stuff – so you can see the fermentation levels at the end. The staff at New Braunfels Water 2 Wine took care of the wine during the fermentation process.

There’s a lot of science behind wine making. This part of the process takes about half an hour. Your barrel of wine will be in the care of Water 2 Wine while it ferments and you’ll coordinate a date for corking and bottling. 

Couple making wine

This is the oak going into the Chardonnay. It gets filtered out before the wine is bottled.

Step 2: 

Design your label. We designed our label using basic photoshop and clip art. Our nod to the interesting year that was 2020 was to name our wine “Train Fire”  as in a combo of dumpster fire + train wreck. Water 2 Wine printed all of our labels for us, which I thought was a nice touch since ours used a lot of printer ink. 

If you need inspiration, they’ve got books of labels you can look at. 

Do-over alert: Put your name somewhere on your label. I wish we’d have added “Made with love by Lee & Jill” and we didn’t think of that until we’d already done our bottling. 

Step 3: 

Cork and bottle. The time between mixing our wine and corking was a little over six weeks. I went into the corking a little bit nervous. I am not very tactile and it seemed like a lot of stuff that could go wrong. This was actually my favorite part. 

This pump is set up to measure – more or less – the amount of wine that’s supposed to go into your bottle.

This is the corking machine and I have a weird urge to have one for my home. That doesn’t make sense because I’m more in the practice of opening wine bottles versus needing to close them but this gizmo was cool.

Well…drinking the wine was actually my favorite part so I guess the bottling and corking was my second favorite part. My husband and I did this as a twosome, with a couple of glasses of wine and some munchies, and it took us about an hour. You are welcome to bring more people to this part of your winemaking experience. Water 2 Wine New Braunfels recommends no more than eight. 

I guess if there was a step 4, it would be to drink your wine but that’s kind of implied, right? We let our wine rest for a few weeks and enjoyed a glass to celebrate the New Year. 

Want to make your own wine? Get started here.

Our batch before putting on the foil and the label.

Other things to know

The cost of the wine is based on the type of wine you make. Ours cost about $300 and our batch yielded 26 bottles, which is an entirely reasonable amount when you price it per bottle. 

Water 2 Wine is open for regular wine tasting and wine drinking. It’s located in the heart of New Braunfels on Seguin Avenue, across from the Faust Hotel. There are lots of shops and restaurants in the area, although Water 2 Wine also has light food items available. 

They also sell custom wine labels which gives you that fun custom look and personalization without going through the winemaking process. 

They’re open Tuesday through Saturday. Call or check their website for hours. Curbside pickup is also available. 

The winery prints out your labels on nice paper and show you the tricks to putting them on. This is our label upside down. Because 2020. Cheers to a better year.

 


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All About Jill

I'm a digital content creator and essayist who copes with parenting and most other situations with humor and snark. Just so you know, if this weren't the internet, I'd be smiling awkwardly and answering simple questions like "How are you today" with gems like "I like pockets."

I really do love pockets, though.

I spent 26 years in the USAF, which went by really, really fast. I'm very proud of my service but I'm loving my second act even more. Writing gives me the opportunity to flex my creative muscles and that's what makes me happy. Welcome.

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rippedjeansandbifocals

Freelance Writer & Travel Expert
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💜 Mom via birth & #adoption
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Jill Robbins
Happy Wednesday. 📷 taken at Wasserman Wranch n Happy Wednesday.

📷 taken at Wasserman Wranch near Alpine. Check my bio link for more information. 

#texastravel #westtexas #texastodo #welovetexas #texaskids #donkeysofinstagram #westtx #texastravel #onlyintexas #alpinetexas #alpinetx #igtexas #igtexasphoto #alamocreatives #heymama_love #texasblogger #satxbloggers #texasthingstodo #miniaturedonkey #miniaturedonkeysofinstagram
"Intelligence + Character. That is the goal of tru "Intelligence + Character. That is the goal of true education." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I saw a lot of posts about Martin Luther King yesterday when I was doing my scrolls through social media...on a day where I wasn't supposed to be ON social media, ahem. We hear and see a lot of Dr. King's words and quotes one day a year. So, instead of apologizing for posting this "a day late" I'll share that I'm challenging myself to remember some of these important words more than one day a year.

Our kids are watching us right now. I mean...they're always watching us but I think what they see in these times is more important than ever. Nuturing our kids' intelligence and character is more important than ever. My kids are 10 now - this picture is about four years old - and they are absorbing EVERYTHING we say, how we say it and even what we don't say. 

This mural is near the suspension bridge in downtown Waco. Waco is famous for all the Magnolia things but there's a lot there for families, too, and the park around the bridge is a great place to explore along the Brazos River. 

#martinlitherkingday #martinlutherkingquotes #wacotexas #wacoheartoftexas #wacohot #texastravel #texastodo #onlyintexas #texaskids #texasfamilies #alamocreatives #igtexasphoto 
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Here’s something you’ve probably never seen be Here’s something you’ve probably never seen before: my bottom teeth.
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I always hide my crooked bottom teeth in pictures and I’m super self-conscious when I talk. So I did something about it.
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I wore braces as a kid and my top teeth are straight but my bottom teeth are shifting and one tooth is traveling into the back of my mouth and I have some crowding. My orthodontist said it’s very unusual to put braces on just half your mouth but my bite is still aligned so they didn’t have to put them on my top teeth - my wallet is thankful.
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Questions I’ve already been asked:
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1️⃣ At your age? Yes, at my age. I still care about my smile. 
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3️⃣ How long do you have to wear them?
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6-9 months.
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3️⃣ Do they hurt? 
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Other questions? Advice?
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Little things can really be big - do you agree? M Little things can really be big - do you agree?

My husband gets up with our kids twice a week and does their breakfast and morning routine and takes them to school so I can sleep in. I don't laze away the morning in bed - it usually amounts to about an extra hour of sleep for me and a little more peace and quiet as I start my day. 

This probably seems like a little thing but this is huge for me. The mental benefits of not having to set my alarm on a schoolday is truly my love language. I would rather have sleep than flowers or presents. 

On those morning where my husband takes my kids to school, I will inevitably find the kitchen not "just so." There will be spills on the table or something that didn't get put away. I resist the urge to be sarcastic or to ask "Um, is there a reason we have four boxes of cereal just sitting on the counter?" or point out that it would take less than 30 seconds to wipe a tabletop or put a box back on the shelf. I resist saying stuff like "I guess if I want it done a certain way, I have to do it myself." I don't even say that to myself. 

My husband isn't "doing me a favor" by taking care of our kids. When I talked about being stressed and tired during an argument last year, he offered to take some things off my plate and giving me two mornings where I don't have to set an alarm was one of his ideas. It's part of the give and take of marriage and even though it makes me clench a little when I see spilled milk or stuff that hasn't put away, I appreciate having a partner who shares the load with me. 

My marriage definitely is not perfect and I'm in no position to give relationship advice. But for us, this one little thing is a really big deal. 

And, as I've recently discovered, a cereal box can sit on the counter for several days and the world doesn't explode. Who knew.

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