Bottling is a particularly busy time of the year. There’s lots of work and it requires lots of hands. We’re lucky to have friends who come out and help on the days we need them to. The days are long and the work is terribly boring. We usually keep everyone doing the same task so it can be 8-10 hours of just sparging bottles with nitrogen and lifting them on to the filler.
We don’t always stop for lunch too if we’re bottling and the line is rolling we’ll just go right through. We might stop for a few minutes for water, and bathroom breaks but as soon as the forklift can move one lot out of the way we’ll usually start on the next lot. If there is time though we will stop and have lunch in the cellar. Usual winery food is to order in pizza, or run out for burritos our sandwiches. The pizza and burritos are not really an option in our location and the sandwich thing gets boring pretty fast. For our last bottling our friend Ingrid fixed that problem by picking up Dim Sum on her way to the winery.
It can be a challenge though, as we don’t have tables and only two chairs so we improvise. Stefania laid some towels over a completed pallet of wine. A few buckets turned upside down worked for chairs. This actually worked out as a great lunch idea. It was filling but not heavy and easy to set up and clean up. There were a few beers cracked, which you can probably see below. Beer fuels winemaking in the Fall, that’s for sure.
