Getting Everything Ready For Bottling.

All about the bottles...

Does anyone enrolled in the laborous but pleasurable task of emptying a bottle of wine give a thought to how it got filled in the first place? Like the notorious liter of milk coming from the supermarket and not a cow, most bottles of wine follow suit.

Well, let me tell you that it takes a lot of effort to fill a bottle if done on a small scale or as the French like to call it, a la garagiste style. The bottles need a lot of tender love and care. A clear rinse followed by stacking them upside down on a drying rack before spritzing each bottle by hand with a sulphur water mix.

The wine which has been idling nice and gently for a year or longer doesn't just jump into each bottle. It gets filtered and often pumped from one vat to another in order to enhance the body by giving it exposure to air. Once the wine is in the bottle, the screw top has to be put on which is normally Bob's station. He is the strongest of us and now that he's working full time for a wine estate, he can anticipate any bottlenecks and also tell me what to do!

Naturally the bottles have to be looked after to make a perfect home for that delightful nectar fit for Gods and us. Some homes are temporary and some long term depending on how many wine bottles get filled.

The bottling only takes place on Saturday but setting up stations in our small cellar needs military precision and planning. A bottling day has it all...fun, hard work and being together as a family. Oh and at the end we all have a late lunch at Bruni's...

Biggi