This post from Selene Wines on bottling their 2008 Sauvignon Blanc has lots of great pictures and explanation. It gives readers the experience of being there. Only one question: how does the wine get loaded into the system?
There are lots of great winery blogs out there, but it's a pleasure to call attention to The Selene Wine Blog. I'm glad to see that someone nominated them for Best Winery Blog of 2008 over at Fermentation.
Hey Mike!
Thanks for the great comments! You have a great question too.
The wine is 'racked' (pumped from each barrel into a tank) from barrels into one tank to make the blend. It stays in the tank anywhere from a day or two (for red wine) up to a couple weeks (for whites). The difference in time is used if you are going to cold stabilize or filter the wine.
They hook up a pump from the tank and run a line to the bottling truck.
Above the fillers (where the wine goes into the bottle) there is a bowl that holds about 15 gallons of wine. It has a float sensor in it, so it turns the pump on when the bowl gets low, and turns the pump off when the bowl gets full.
That way if the bottling line stops, the bowl will not overflow with wine being pumped in.
Great question. We get so focused on the actual bottling pieces we forget about the most imporant part... the wine!
Keep up the good work!
Tracy Hall
Selene Wines
Posted by: Tracy Hall | February 18, 2009 at 09:04 AM