It took longer to drive to Vint Hill Craft Winery than bottle our barrel of 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon. DJ, Vint Hill’s winemaker, had the bottling machine steam cleaned and cooled by the time we arrived. Our wine was racked into a stainless steel tank that was connected to the bottling machine. The first task was to flush out any water that may have condensed in the line. DJ ran some wine through each of the bottle spigots into a bucket. He then returned the wine to the stainless steel tank. This wine had a little water mixed in with it. Returning it to the wine in the tank would not affect the wine. If we didn’t do this, the lingering water that was in the bottling line after the cleaning may have affected the first bottle.
Meghan and Kevin helped us with the bottling process. Meghan placed empty bottles on the track, Kathy placed a capsule on the bottles as they passed her, I loaded the filled bottles into a case while Kevin took pictures. I was filling cases as the same rate that Meghan was emptying cases. It took less than an hour to completely fill a barrel of wine. There was one drawback though. The label machine was broken so our bottles do not have the label on them. That will have to be done by hand once we receive the labels. That will be a good task while watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Luckily we took two cars to Vint Hill because we needed to put cases in both of them.
I have bottled wine at home using suction and gravity. There was a small bottle filler at Tin Lizzie Wineworks. But a bottling line at a winery is simply hands down the best way to bottle.
DJ told us that bottle shock was only a short time. The aromas will return after a couple days. I was formally under the impression that bottle shock would last for weeks. We did try our wine after the last bottle was only half full. I am looking forward to watching the wine evolve as it now bottle ages.
Cheers,
Terry
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