Taking labels off bottles

[Jerry D Mead]

Try a small quantity of soda ash (pool cleaning chemical), which seems to break down some of the non water soluble glues which are fashionable these days.

The wineries started using them so the labels would fall off in ice buckets and as a result have lost all the p.r. value of people soaking of labels and collecting them. Lots of restaurants used to present the labels from the wines you ordered that night as a kind of momento at the end of the evening.