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

Wine Labels - Old is the new New

This is one of my favorite wine labels.  Palermo by Orin Swift.  

This is another Orin Swift label, The Prisoner.


Pappilon, by Orin Swift.

I love the large label with no information.  I think I would like The Prisoner more if it was in the same style as Palermo and Papillon - no title, white border.  I really love these bottles.

I'm thinking so much about labels because in a handful of days TK and I will be bottling our wine.  We don't need a finished label in order to bottle, but it's one of the funner parts of making wine, so I've started trying to narrow it down.

Thinking of favorite labels, I always have to point to my former boss Michelle Edwards wine: Linnea Rhizotomi.  I adore this label.  I want a tattoo of this label.

Also, I recently saw these label designs by the Spanish design agency Lavernia & Cienfuegos.  They see faces and people in corks too!  

I've yet to see a Koalo bear though.

See, I only talked about putting a hat on a cork, these guys did it! 

These are the latest cork faces I found this week:

 Dopey Frankenstein and a one-eyed pirate.  Excuse me while I go make hats for them.

Lavernia & Cienfuegos design all kinds of beautiful things, like Solar Milk?!? Just kidding, sun tan and bronzing products.  The packaging is so pretty, I want some Leche Solar.

So then it was time to think about my label.  I wanted it to be simple, like Orin Swift.  Just a picture in the front and save all the information for the back label.  

Front.

Back.

I love polaroids, so naturally I wanted the label to be of a polaroid I took.  Although when I showed the front label to a friend and they quickly advised against going with the 'instagram' look.  This is hilarious and sad to me because I wasn't taking a new picture and making it look old, I used an old picture of an actual polaroid.

These are all the polaroids I have framed on my wall.  I started taking them in 2004 when I got my first camera as a birthday gift.

       

These are the ones that I have yet to frame.

Will post about the weekend's bottling adventures in a few days. In the mean time, any one else have favorite labels to share?

-L

Screw Caps Anyone?

I wanted to start today with a peaceful scene of Portugal, because this time of year I can slip into some negative feelings about Portugal's cork industry.  I have been screening corks for the upcoming bottling since March and at this rate will not finish until July.

These are large format corks that I first visually inspect and select, to ensure I only soak the prettiest corks.

 Corks on the left are pitted and a lower grade (C) than the corks on the right (Grade A).  I took these pictures at a supplier facility in Portugal.

After sorting, I screen the corks by soaking them over night (24 hours) in 10% ethanol to extract any potential TCA.  I explained the process in more detail in last year's post: Soooo Much Cork

So for today's post I will share my favorite corks.

This is Happy Cork.  Intern Amber found him a few years ago while she was inspecting corks.  Todd Pickering captured his portrait last year.

Happy Cork reminds me of Happy Toast.  I almost ate him during a lunch in Portugal.

Meet Skeptical Cork.  He's not sure about this cork business.

This one looks a little constipated to me.

Gentleman Cork. I think he is only missing a top hat.

Just go with it. . .

 I need to find happy little mustache faces, because sometimes I feel sad thinking about all the cork I have to soak.

Other times I feel totally over whelmed. . . .

But then I remember Love Cork.  Every time I feel overwhelmed, looking at Love Cork makes me feel a little better.

-L

Happy Birthday M & M!

I took my puppies to visit Todd Pickering in Pt Reyes a few weeks ago.  We spent a morning running through the fields across from his studio.

 These are my Beagle puppies, who are 1 year old next week.  Max is on the left and his sister Mila is on the right.

 I wanted to capture them before they lost their puppy-ness.  Max already looks like a dog, Mila still has a puppy face, which lets her get away with more shenanigans.

Mila is on the left and Max on the right.  They are exactly the same age but Max is bigger than her and usually people ask if he is older.

Since they are hounds I get questions about whether I'm going to teach them to track, or sniff out TCA.  I'm still working on teaching them not to throw up in my car.  I think it's going to be a while.

Mila running towards us.  I love the ears! I took hot dogs to bribe them to run towards the camera.

I also wanted to capture moments like this for when I need to remember that I love them.

Because sometimes they do this:

 Tear up packages.

 Tear up their toys.  All stuffing must be removed from all toys.  Always.

Tear up favorite wool sweaters.  Fortunately for them they have yet to tear up any shoes.

And as for the throwing up in my car . . . I think you can all picture that yourselves.

Also they are constantly escaping from my fenced yard.  Ever other week or so I get a call from a different neighbor who found them wandering the streets.  Or in their yard.  Or at the Round Table pizza half mile from my house.  Or in front of the local dive bar.

At least Mila looks sorry.  Sometimes.

Hopefully this photo session was a warm up for my real goal: Winery Dog Calendar 2014!

-L

Picturing Todd Pickering

Meet Todd Pickering.  Or as I liked to call him, Todd Picturing.  He is a professional photographer my winery hired to chronicle an entire year at the winery.  I really enjoyed having him all year pop into the lab and point his giant camera at us.  His year ended this January, I've just been lazy about posting this.

Here he is taking pictures of my lab intern Gilroy processing a maturity sample.

Here he is taking a picture of a tasting set up.

This day he took pictures of dirt, in tubes.

Then intern Aaron took a picture of Todd taking a picture. And I took a picture of him.

Then Gilroy took a picture of me taking a picture of Aaron taking a picture of Todd taking a picture of dirt in a tube.

It's May and I am all alone in the lab this time of year.  I miss my 2012 Harvest Team very much.  This is one of my favorite pictures that Todd took:

Aaron, Kelli, me, Gilroy (Natalie).

Anyway, check out Todd's pictures on his website.  He normally has more interesting subjects!

-L