Tuesday, December 15, 2009

One day till Bottling!

It has been really cold this week and I was surprised to drive into work and see that our lake had partially froze over! Now don't get your ice skates ready, it is just a small layer of ice, but it was exciting to me!

That poor tree has been water logged (and now ice logged) for the past week. I hope it makes it through the winter!

As I said in the previous post we are getting close to bottling (tomorrow is the big day)... so the boys have been busy prepping all of the wines. I mentioned the filtering of the wine, but I did not mention the blending of one particular wine. After each wine aged separately in oak barrels the Consensus is being blended together to the parameters that our wine club members picked! The wine is in stainless steel right now, sitting patiently for bottling.We also had to test the wine for alcohol level and sulfur levels. This insures that the wine is at the correct stage for bottling. Another factor to consider for bottling, which I would have never thought of is keeping the wines and the empty bottles at generally the same temperature. It is important that the bottles are just as cold as the wine going into them or else the bottles will condensate. Now although that doesn't sound like a big deal, it is! Because if there is condensation the labels will slide right off the bottles!

Bottling is actually done in the back of a large semi truck with all of the mechanisms to fill, label, cork and add the foil to the bottles. I am really interested in how this will work and I'll give you and update (and pictures) tomorrow!

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