Bottling: A Lesson in Adversity

As I stood just outside the shade of the bottling truck, attempting to catch a little of Thursday’s beautiful 60-degree sun, I heard a grumbling mantra of “Murphy’s Law” coming from the direction of Joe, the bottling line technician. If it wasn’t one thing (the wet, humid weather on Tuesday) it was another (a mechanical problem with the labeler on Thursday).

Bottling was not off to an auspicious start.

There are lots of little things that can go wrong with a bottling, so I guess we should count ourselves lucky that both days the difficulties were more aesthetic than anything else. On Tuesday we couldn’t get the labels to stick to the bottles and on Thursday the sensor was malfunctioning and the labeler put too many labels (or none at all!) on the bottles.

But around midday Joe and Hunter figured out what was tripping the sensor and we were off and bottling!

My first job was to take a paper towel and wipe any drips off the bottles as the came down the line, after they were corked but before they got to the labeler. Well, being a bottling/assembly line novice, I was convinced that the bottles had to stay distanced precisely as they came out of the corker…

But then Joe came over and, much to my horrified surprise, picked one up—right off the line—and disturbed the symmetry. Then he wiped the bottle clean and let me in on a little secret: you see that sensor there (about, ohh a foot to my right and definitely within my peripheral vision)? It stops them, so they don’t have to be a specific distance apart. And indeed, the bottles were backing up in front of the sensor, waiting patiently to be capped.

Needless to say, I felt observant.

It wasn’t long until they moved me from drip-duty to catching the bottles as they came off the line, inspecting the labels and caps for imperfections and placing them in cases. Griff assured me that he usually does this job by himself, but I’m not at all sure how he manages to put the bottles in the case, send the full case down to Bert to finish packaging and put an empty case on the table in time to catch the next bottle coming down the line.

Granted, bottling our sweet wines is a bit of an unusual situation. We bottle the Vidal and Riesling in the tall bottles traditionally used in the Rhine valley in Germany (where Riesling originated). Because of their shape and height, these bottles are more prone to tipping. On Thursday, they’d come off the line normally, but instead of milling patiently, gathering to the side of the conveyor belt, one or another of the bottles would tip just slightly and we’d have sticky glass dominoes (I am happy to report that there were no casualties in the bottling of Basignani wine). Emily and I had our hands full, and I for one am glad I had help!  

I left the winery Thursday evening tired, sticky and smelling of fermented grape. And I’ll admit that my lily-white, never-done-an-honest-day’s-labor-in-my-life hands spent the weekend slathered in cream, much to my family’s amusement, but it was worth it!