Of course it will need time to rest in our temperature-controlled warehouse to ensure that, when it is released in 2013, it will have our signature elegance that we promise to deliver to your glass. We believe bottling is a most critical step in the transfer of the fruits of our harvest labor and the barrel aging process to the wine in your glass. Follow our process and check out our videos of the bottling in action… 1. Throughout the wine's maturation in barrel, we devote time for extensive blind tasting of each barrel to determine our barrel blends - that is, the best fit barrels for "728", "Lollapalooza" and "Doyle". 2. During its aging process in our French oak barrels, the wine has naturally clarified and the natural grape solids have fallen to the bottom of the barrel. 3. The crystal-clear wine is racked (or decanted) off the sediment (natural grape and yeast solids) to our stainless steel tanks to marry together the nuances of each barrel into one master blend. This ensures every bottle is exactly the same. 4. Now that the wine is prepared with the utmost care to not introduce excess oxygen, the bottling process begins.
6. The wine is transferred to the filler bowl, and the bottles are then fed into the filler wheel where spouts enter each bottle and deliver 750 ml of wine (plus a few extra drips!) 7. The filled bottles are fed into a vacuum that removes any volume over 750 ml plus the oxygen in the headspace, just before a cork is mechanically squeezed and plunged into the neck of the bottle, leaving the top of the cork exactly level with the top of the bottle.
9. The corked and capsuled bottles then pass an electric eye that triggers the release of the back and the front labels (which are vacuum held onto a belt until the bottle passes by), at which time the adhesive on the labels grabs the bottles in a very specific, electronically set placement.
12. With our equipment we can bottle about 2,000 cases per day of one wine and one bottle size.
Changing the bottle size requires changing all of the feed wheels on the bottling line and definitely slows down the process. 13. 3-Liter and 5-Liter bottles are filled, corked and labeled by hand….and so are some of our magnums! It is a lot of hard work to get it right, but our wine is ALWAYS taken care of and our meticulous and energetic crew ALWAYS gets a great lunch! Team work is the name of our game!
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FIDDLEHEAD CELLARS, 1597 E. CHESTNUT AVENUE LOMPOC, CA 93436
Call or email to request private tasting appointments and to coordinate wine pick-ups. 805.735.7728 (weekdays) 805.742.0204 (weekends) [email protected] Tasting Room Hours: Sat/Sun 2-5, Mon-Friday By appointment Please note, the buyer is responsible for all charges associated with all returned shipments, including those not delivered due to intoxication. |