If you dont know what goes on behind the scenes of winemaking and you want to know about what we call the sausage making, we are about to take you on a journey behind the scenes of a boutique winery bottling process.

I left the house around 6:45am on Saturday and when I got into carneros it was getting light enough to get a shot of the weather.


Once i arrived at the Winery, Rob had arrived with the bottling trailer and everything was being steam cleaned. Eric and I were just milling around really trying to get the sleep out of our eyes and honestly trying to keep warm a little bit. We were running everything through the inventory, Labels, Corks, Bottles, enough people?

Not yet, but finally Lisa arrived with the managerial help, we have our foreman Chase and our quality control agent Madison as well. We weren't ready to work yet, because now it was time to eat the donuts.

Everything was clean and now it was time to load the roll of labels and the bottle set. This took a few minutes, to do but is interesting to watch.  Everything is rather high tech and Rob took care of us measuring the gaps between front and back label with digital calipers.  Thanks Rob.

Meanwhile Eric P.  A great friend of ours that I convinced to get out of bed and drive up all the way from San Mateo just to help us with bottling.   Thanks to Eric P as well.   For those of you in his neck of the woods, he left the winery with a few bottles to share with neighbors.

The Roles of Bottling
The roles of bottling to me are kinda like the SuperFriends cartoon that we grew up watching on Saturday mornings.   Our rag tag group of misfits got into a groove within 5 minutes and we had an assembly line that would have made Henry Ford blush with pride.



The Loader -   Eric P was masterful at his craft.  handing case after case of empty glass up into the trailer to be lined up on the shelf on the left hand side.   The bottles are upside down in each case and the tops are sealed.  (I dont know why...maybe someone can tell me)







The Glass Man - Rob filled this important role by flipping each case of empty glass upside down, removing the case and lining up the bottles so the filling station person always has empty glass at hand.  (Your author posed as the loader as Rob was busy lining up the labels)









The Gasser/Filler - Lisa kept this train rolling like an Aerosmith concert in the mid-70's.   Here job was to grab an empty bottle and load it with Argon gas and then load it into a six bottle rotating filling station.   She loads the first six into the empty rotating pedistalls and as the 6th one is filled and removed by the corker, she replaces it with an empty bottle every 4.5 seconds.   You can see in the picture above the brown boxes of glass, the empty bottles and right at Lisa's waist is the argon dispenser.   




The Corker -  I performed this job, but not very well at first until Rob showed me the trick.  For the first bottle grab the full bottle off the filler with your left hand and place it into the corking machine with the same hand.  Now grab the next bottle off the filler with your left hand and grab the corked bottle with your right hand then twist to the right and set the corked bottle on the conveyer belt with your right hand and you stick the full bottle in the corking machine with your left.  Twist left and then start all over again...every 4.5 seconds as seen in the photo on the right.




Quality Control (The QC) - The filled and corked bottles head down the labeler conveyer belt and get labeled and then Eric G. checks them for quality control.   We want to make sure the cork ink isn't smudged and the labels are on straight.  Eric sticks them in the case and when a case is full, he sends it down a short set of roller to the Stacker.     






















The Stacker -  Eric P. also fulfilled the role of the stacker, when he wasn't the loader.  The stacker takes the boxes that have rolled out of the trailer and stacks them on a new pallet.  As you can see, Eric P enjoys his time at the winery.
            









The SuperStars
We wanted to add a personal touch to our Première Rosé, so we hand numbered all 780 bottles of wine.  As you can see here, Erica was as happy as any sports figure that was sitting in front of 780 baseballs to autograph.  Or was it that she is 24 weeks into carrying twin girls??   

Meanwhile Eric unpacked each box and set it on the table and then after our wonderful wives numbered the bottles; he loaded them back into the cases.   I was assigned to taping each box, applying the appropriate signage and flipping cases cork side down to rest for 6 weeks.



  
Thats All Folks
Well that's enough excitement for one weekend.  We did have enough energy for everyone to pose in front of our inaugural vintage of Première Rosé.

On behalf of Dave, Erica, (the twinutero girls),  Chase (with bottle), Madison, Lisa and Eric.   We thank you for taking the time to read our blog and we hope that you enjoy our wine.  We certainly enjoyed making it for you.

 

Before we leave you, our spokesmodel asks..."Wouldn't it be refreshing to enjoy a bottle of Première Rosé out of your cellar this summer??"

Cheers

dave