Yesterday was a momentous day for me. After years of planning and waiting, I bottled my first vintage. Woohoo! We bottled 300 cases of the 2006 Eight Arms Syrah, Stagecoach Vineyard, Napa Valley. That’s 3,600 bottles! The mobile bottling unit arrived at the winery at around 7 o'clock in the morning, we started bottling at 8:00 am and were completed by around 1:30. There were nine of us there and the process is pretty simple. Dump the empty bottles out of their boxes, sparge with Nitrogen to get any dust out of the bottles and then place them on the filler. Next the corks are placed into the bottle under a vacuum, the capsules are then attached, the bottles are labeled and then placed back in their boxes ready to be sold. Well, not quite. They will need 4–5 months of bottle aging so that they can recover from bottle shock (what happens to wine when it is bottled – the components tend to fall apart from the harshness of the bottling, but then slowly come back together). Below are some pictures of the bottling.
Empty cases of bottles with the mobile bottling unit in the background
The wine going into the bottles
Labels waiting to go onto the bottles
A finished bottle coming of the line
Cases stacked and ready to go!
3 Comments:
Hi Iain,
I am so pleased and excited to hear of this bottling milestone for you! You deserve the very best and all success in this endeavour...
Love to you and Stacey and Oscar,
LiAnne
Mazel tov Iain. I hope that your wines develops nicely and that you have many great vintages ahead of you.
cheers,
sammy (your cousin)
Congratulations!!! Can't wait to taste the finished product. :-)
Salud,
Laura Payette
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