08-20-05 - Put a cork in it!

Bottling is always an exciting time of year. There is always trepidation and preparation and anticipation. Being a relatively small winery, the expense of owning a bottling line is not necessarily cost-effective. A premium bottling line can cost as little as $100,000 and I have seen premium bottling bottling units for as much as $400,000.

Instead, like many smaller wineries, we utilize a service well-known in the industry, a mobile bottling unit. Arriving in a large semi, these firms roll in, open up their trucks, and after a few minutes of setting up and attaching hoses to our tanks, can begin filling bottles within minutes.

A large crew is needed. We have pre-staged boxes and boxes of empty bottles which are opened and placed into the conveyor-belt system. As they work their way through the line, workers are watching to assure that labels are going on correctly, the capsules are placed, and that the bottles are re-placed back into the boxes. As they exit the truck, the crew working outside seals the boxes and stacks them on palates.

The amazing aspect of what these mobile companies can do is the fine precision of their timing. For the week or two before bottling, our assistant winemaker has been coordinating the staging of the wine out of the barrels and into the tanks and measuring the volume. Once the volume amount is given to the bottling company, they can determine within a ten-minute window how long the bottling procedure will take place. In this particular instance, we had two days of bottling almost 3,000 cases.

A quick glance at our vines shows the continuing growth of the foliage as well as a deepening depth of color coming through on the grapes. I did not take a grape shot of Vine 2 as there is still no verasion there, but the gradual change on Vine 1 is evident.