Wine Bottling

Today, Marie and I volunteered to help a local winemaker bottle some of his 2007 wines. We showed up at around 8 am and they were still setting up. The Carlton wine makers are small scale, and it is not worth the money for them to invest in their own bottling equipment (~$100,000). When they want to bottle, they pay a traveling bottling trailer to help them. The winemaker purchases the bottles, labels, foil, cork, and the trailer operators help out. There were 10 volunteers there today, and only 4 had ever helped with a bottling.

After introductions, coffee and scones, we all mounted into the trailer. Marie, myself, and another OSU alum named Josh were assigned foiling. This consisted of putting aluminum caps on bottles after they are corked and before they are labeled. Our first 20 bottles we had the wrong foil caps and they had to be removed. WHOOPS!

Once we got going we cruised through lunch. We bottled Atticus Wines 2007 pinot noir and 2007 pinot select. It was monotonous, but I loved the music that was pumping through the speakers. The wife of the Atticus winemaker made a terrific lunch for the crew. We all sat in the sun and chatted. The two winemakers there invited our classes to the vineyard anytime for field trips, although I am not sure I could get the high school principal to sign onto letting sophomores go tour wine country.

After lunch, Marie helped with loading boxes of bottles and handing them to the person who put them on the beginning of the conveyor belt. We began to bottle the Raptor Ridge (a different wine maker) pinot noir from 2007. I continued with the aluminum caps. After a short break at 2, I assumed the position of putting bottles on the conveyor belt. The empty bottles come packed in a twelve-case box with one end open. I picked up the box, squeezed, and gently poured the bottles onto a table and slid them onto the belt. It was good physical labor. Marie took a position at the end of the line putting the full, labeled, corked, and foiled bottles into the boxes I had emptied. At the end, we were finished feeding bottles, but needed more empty boxes to package the full bottles and I smashed the only bottle of the day. Bummer.

We stopped at 3:30 and everyone was smiling. We bottled over 1200 cases (12 bottles a case). For our labor Marie and I walked out with 5 bottles of wine, all valued between $28-$40. Although it was assembly line work, if we can find a few weekends to volunteer and earn wine, I think we will be happy. I included a video of the pouring station. In the back right you can see the foilers putting on caps!