Bottling the 2012 Wine

It took weeks of planning to make this day possible.  TK and I picked the day almost 2 months in advance, and then it turned out it was the Saturday during the hottest weekend the year.  By the time we were aware of the heat wave, too many things were in motion to change the date.  Like this giant truck arriving at my house to deliver 80 cases of glass.

I was looking forward to bottling to finally have something real to show for the last year of time, work (and money).  However, anyone who makes wine for a living can tell you that bottling is the worst.  This was only going to be fun because we were bottling my baby, but also because I suckered a bunch of my friends to come help ;)

But before everyone arrived, the first step was to transfer the wine from the stainless steel tank to the "bottling tank".  The bottling tank is on TK's pickup bed so that we could use gravity to fill The Filler (bottom right).  TK and I woke up at 4:30am to get things prepped before everyone showed up at 7am.  We needed to start early to take advantage of the morning coolness because the afternoon was going to be in the 100s.

Eric, Ali and Mirabel are darling people who came to my house at 7am on a Saturday to lend a hand.  Eric had an hour drive to get to Napa, Ali drove from Benicia.  With no time to waste, everyone got to work.

We are using gravity to move the wine from the tank to the Filler.  We used a 3 spout Filler.  It's a small little guy, but it gets the job done.

TK filled bottles then passed them to Eric.

  

Then Eric used a pipette to take out any excess wine to get a consistent fill level for every bottle.

Then Eric passed the bottles to me so I could cork them.  Yes, I am always that excited about corks.

  

Cork goes in the jaw, it gets compressed, then pushed into the bottle.

LUXIA corks.

Here you can see the whole operation.  A bottle went from TK to Eric, Eric to me.  Then I put it on the table for Mirabel to spin the foil (capsule) then Ali took the bottle from Mirabel and put it in the empty case on the bottom right of the picture.  Not seen is Kelli because she took all the pictures.  Thanks Kelli!

Once we had 3 full cases, we used a dolly to take them out of this garage "The Winery", to the other temperature controlled garage "The Cellar".

Meanwhile outside, the puppies waited loudly and impatiently for us to set them free.
Left to right: Winston, Max, Mila and Luke.  Winston is Eric's pup.

Max, Mila, Luke.

The bottling tank was smaller than the stainless steel tank, so about half way through bottling we had to fill the tank up again.  Fortunately, later in the morning our friend Bill (who lent us the tank, pump and filler) arrived to lend a hand. Bill took over for TK and Eric worked double time leveling and corking so I could help transfer the wine.  

I especially like this picture because I look like I am literally half of TK's size.

We bottled 3 barrels in 3 hours.  By 11am we were starting to prepare lunch and the day was really heating up.  After lunch, everyone left and TK and I celebrated by falling asleep for the rest of the afternoon.  By dinner time it was slightly cooler and we went out to clean up.  Then we woke up on Sunday to do it all over again because we still had 1 barrel left!  It was only 1 barrel, so we were able to do everything just the two of us.

Special thanks to Bill, Ali, Mirabel, Eric and Kelli for giving up a Saturday morning!

Labels will be printed by August and we will have to have a labeling party because the only thing worse than bottling is hand labeling.  Uh, I mean - hand labeling is fun! Everyone should come!

-L