Wine Matters in Walla Walla: Bottling Day at Trio March 3, 2007

The Trio Vintners wine line!

Bottling Day at Trio Vintners started at 6:00 am didn't let up until 10:00pm. What a long, exhausting and exhilarating day! Tim was there from the minute the truck showed up until we ended--he definitely gets the employee of the day award!

For this tough job, we hired Custom Bottling as the the on-site bottling truck. It's a company that specializes in bottling needs for small lot wineries and is prepared to handle the myriad of problems that arise when moving wine into bottles, not to mention corking and labeling. It begins with the arrival of their fully self-contained semi in the wee hours of the morning . Bill Hamm and his team begin to put the operation into motion - working with us to move our prefiltered wine from our tanks, through final filtration and into the bottle filler on the truck. Once again, we have to take the utmost care to keep all the lines clean and everything very sterile. The machinery inside of the truck is a tightly orchestrated contraption that fills, corks, capsules and labels about 150 cases of wine per hour. Tim, Steve and I were familiar with this kind of operation having worked for other wineries during bottling season, but this time it was OUR wine in the line and OUR name was on the bottle! Yikes!

Everybody fell into their positions, taking on various tasks; pulling empty bottles out of cases and 'feeding' the line, slipping capsules on the bottles as they came out of the corker, eyeing the fill line, managing quality control, placing finished bottles into cases and stacking pallets. We had plenty of fits and starts - all due to factors related to the size and shape of our labels, the temperature inside and outside the truck as it affected the adhesive capabilities of the label, imperfections on bottles ...you name it. There were a few comical " Lucy and Ethel" moments , when the line got ahead of us...but it went pretty smoothly overall. Next time we'll be pros!

Once again, we had lots of great help from friends who pitched in: Our ever helpful Enology and Viticulture student (also know as our cellar rat) Kevin Uhl, Bob Shafer, Jim and Regina Vandersloot, Doug Simmons from the soon-to-be open Elegante Cellars, Devin Stinger from Adamant and his wonderful parents, Tim's wife Arlene and, of course, the lovely and talented Hannah Israel. Finally, thanks to our bottling tech, Mr. Bill Hamm we rocketed through 550 cases of our 2007 releases. Another glamorous day in the wine biz! Pass the Motrin!