Bottling Wine.

From the barrel into the bottle.

Wine is so easy to drink yet most of us don't realize how much blood sweat and tears go into making it. We've become spoilt by having wine on tap or rather unscrewing a top and pouring a glass never giving any thought to the labourious process gone on before.

Once the wine is ready to be bottled from vast vats it only denotes the end of a long year of pruning, harvesting, pressing and resting. But of course even the step of bottling is fraught with effort. Nice effort but a hard workout nonetheless.

Yesterday we preset the stage for today. Got the empty bottles sorted, organized the pump and filter machine and put everything into the right order so that this morning we could literally start the moment we arrived. Eight 'o clock was the start and the four of us ( my parents, Bob and I ) got cracking right away. The weather made it comfortable to be inside a warm wine cellar as today was a Baskerville kind of day - foggy and cold.

It took us five hours to fill most of the red wine and an additional fabulous hour to eat lunch at a local Buschenschank. Bob and I were just saying that this is our eighth year of helping out with making wine and it kind of feels great to have a new tradition of something both of us had never dreamed of back in South Africa. You know, drinking wine is easy but being allowed to help in creating wine is a step above...

Biggi

A Day Of Bottles And Wine.

Tonight I'll dream of bottles for sure.

Bob and I have just come home from a day spent at the cellar, bottling numerous wines. Uhubler, Blaufränkisch and Grüner Veltiner. It was a gorgeous day outside and as we had the cellar doors wide open we didn't miss anything or anyone. The vineyards were teeming with visitors, cyclists and those looking for a boozy lunch.

The odd few slowed down enough in order to look into our cellar but as we were really tethered to bottles, we couldn't take note. At one stage mum and I each had two bottles hanging off the filling contraptions, one eye each on turning the pump on and off and the other on making sure enough empty bottles were on hand.

It sounds deceptively easy but at high speed it got a bit frenzied resulting in a few wine puddles on the floor. There were five of us and we made a good team where each knew more or less what to do. At one stage mum and I resembled a sketch straight out of Dinner for one and if only one of us had had a free hand we'd have set records on YouTube. At least the five of us had a good giggle at all of our antics...

The cleaning up afterwards is not that nice but needs to be done regardless of how tired one is. The men drove the filled bottles slowly to another cellar for storage. Even that is hard going as the heavy crates need to be taken down a set of old stone steps. But all's well that ends well.

The final task for the day was a debriefing at Bruni's over a big slice of Kümmelbraten Brot and a few spritzers. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

Biggi

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

The Random Fleeting Chance Encounters Are What Make Life More Colourful.

Just an average day...

As you know, yesterday was kept clear of everything except the bottling of wine. I don't know about you, but I tend to think that this is the most important step in the viticulture process...how else would you ever get to drink the wine?

Each year we hone down the set up procedure and make it flow more smoothly and this year we were on track to have a flawless start until my mum realized that the filters were the wrong size. Never mind, we drove to Deutsch Schützen's Lagerhaus to get some more.

It was a sunny morning and I was waiting in the car, just as well because it was nice to sit there and see the minutiae of village life pass by. Some villagers on foot, some on bicycles and some in motorized vehicles aka tractors.

Some ignored me, but some didn't. After five years of being entrenched in this fabulous village lifestyle ( eh, Bob and I are now Village People ) I know most by sight and quite a few from these random chance encounters. Be they in the local grocery shop, in the bank or at the various functions in and around our village.

Well, there I was perusing villagers and one came out of the Lagerhaus with his dog by his side. Waving and smiling I greeted him and he waved and smiled back. All in all we perhaps exchanged two to three sentences with the weather and dog being the main topics of conversation, before he got into his car and drove off.

For me, these types of chance encounters with friends and acquaintances are what make life highly enjoyable and interesting. These few minutes of seemingly superficial conversation are really the essence of life...connecting with others and feeling included.

As for the bottling of wine, we had a long 10 hour day and managed to bottle the red, white and Uhubler wines. Please don't feel bad for me, because some of these bottles are definitely heading my way...Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!

After our 10 hour day of bottling, bending down, picking up heavy crates and having fun ( really! ) we were a tad bit exhausted at the end of our day. Bob was even too tired to be in the picture...

Biggi

A Tasty Benefit Of Filtering Red Wine.

The penny drops for me about a House-Wine...

As I have told you recently, any work to do with making wine is fun despite the jolly hard physical aspect of it. We filtered & bottled wine the other day. Each action requires time and a lot of cleanliness. In fact this cleanliness is the major time waster. Yet 100% necessary.

In case you are wondering how one cleans: we only use a high pressure water hose. Only water gets used to clean the wine barrels, filters, pipes etc. No cleaning liquid is used. Gosh, that would be awful and leave a never ending aftertaste vintage after vintage. Imagine getting a whiff of Sunlight liquid with your red wine...?

At the start of any wine activity ( filtering, bottling etc ) the equipment used gets cleaned again. Before & after. Not much fun but what can you do. We had finally set up the filtering paraphernalia and even before we filtered the wine itself, about 100 liters of water got filtered first.
Cleanliness = fabulous wine .

It was rather fun to at first see the water shoot through the pipe and then it started to pink as the first bit of red filtered through. The trick was to know when the last bit of water mix is out of the pipes. Just in case, a big bucket got filled with the deep purple liquid that smelled like heaven. This red wine aroma alone would have switched any white wine lover to red. Once the bucket was filled, the rest of the filtered wine got pumped into its proper home.

After all was done and dusted, cleaned and cleaned again, this bucket of deep purple nectar was filled into about 5 or 6 liter bottles. As you might have guessed, this is what the Garagistes call their " House Wine ". A wine not to be sold but good enough to drink yourself or haul out when friends come over.

As a helper of this wine making process, I got given 4 of those House wines and the other day I cracked a bottle open. Funnily enough, these bottles get closed with a lid similar to a coke bottle. No corking there!

When I took the first sip of this House wine, it was as if a philharmonic orchestra of flavours performed on my tongue. This ordinary house wine was out of this world. The delectable berry note was front and center. The red wine taste was pure and sensual. Overall it had a lightness that made it uncomplicated to have a second or third glass.

A simply divine wine indeed. Can you imagine, what the actual wine tastes like if the house wine
( which is a tad bit diluted with some water ) makes you break out in a song of praise, joy and sheer pleasure at being able to drink wine...

P/S: My Mum is the wine maker / Garagiste! Mum, I bow to you.

Biggi

Do You Think It's Harder To Bottle Or Un-bottle Wine?

If you love wine, you should have a turn at bottling wine too!

Living in a wine making region has moved the abstract idea of how wine gets into the bottle from the peripheral subconsious to the front and center..." oh, this is how its done!" followed by
" oh, this is jolly hard work."

A few of the big winemakers in the area do have machination of sorts, but for the smaller ones, all hands on deck is a familiar mantra. Bob and I will do a spot of bottling today. As easy as this sounds, there is a lot of manual work involved.

• The empty bottles ( either refurbished & washed or new ) need to be spritzed with sulphur water, to make sure they are clean. We do that by pressing down the bottle over the nozzle of the spritzing device. After doing a few hundred, the biceps and shoulders start to tell their story.

• A pump with what seems like a lot of hoses leading to & fro from it, needs to be assembled. Figuring out which switch is forward or backward, is always a new challenge especially if you have tasted the wine that is being bottled....The hoses go from the wine barrel through the filtering pump into the dispensary trough. It looks like a trough were the bottles get lined up to be filled by the delectable nectar of the gods.

• Understandably the most fun is had at this station of the filling process. If you empty the wine trough to quickly or rather don't fill it quickly enough, the wine stops flowing. Only one thing left to do...the same thing you do to get petrol out of a tank. You have to syphon to get the wine flowing again. Needless to say, the person at this bottling station loves to run into a bottle neck and thus is rather a happy soul. The pre-taster of the wine!

• " Bob put a cork in it! " is the call of the day. Oh yes, Bob is the corker. Oh my, his biceps get a good workout. Pushing that corker down a few hundred times is far from easy.

• The co-ordinator or commonly known as The Boss or La Petite Général, flits between the various stations and also makes sure the filled bottles are filled to the correct level. Putting the filled & corked bottles into a crate and then onto the shelf is also not easy because you constantly have to bend and stretch.

• Of course the most tedious job is always the washing of everything. Before and after, the equipment ( pump, hoses, barrels trough etc ) get cleaned with a high pressure water hose. Cleanliness is top when bottling wine.

• The last job, gosh what a hardship, is to go to a Buschenschank for lunch...

Once you are privy to the wonderful process of creating delicious wine from a humble grape, an appreciation gets hold of you. A bottle of wine is not just a bottle of wine. It is a result of hard work, effort and lots of loving care by the vintner. Every sip of wine needs to be savoured and appreciated for the wonder that it is....

Biggi