Here's a series of photos showing how we bottled our 2006 Riesling. We made this wine at at College Cellars, beginning way back in September before our own winery was ready for operation. We had a lot of great assistance from our former Enology Instructor, Mike Moyer and a group of his students. Thanks to these wonderful folks we got through 200 cases in just a few hours.
Normally the labels and capsules are applied at this time as well, but we saved this step for another session.
Bottling white wine begins with filtration. Because it's a white wine it's more subject to spoilage so we used a series of very, very fine filtering pads (final finishes down to .45 microns ) to get rid of the "bugs" (spoilage bacteria) that could later cause the wine to go bad. White wines also require perfect clarity, so filtering cleans it up. Here, we used a plate and frame filter system. The 'frame' houses a series of plates, 25 or so, which in turn holds the filter pads. 500 gallons of finished wine is pumped from the chilled tank where it has been stored and settling for the past few months, through the filtration pads and into the bottle line filler. This is all done in one step - and once it's set up it goes quickly, it's just setting all the lines and filter pads. Everything must be very, very clean during this entire process!
Water is flushed through the filter pads first to clean out the cardboard taste that the filters will impart. It's important to continually taste the water as it flushes through the pads and wait for a 'clear taste'.
Once the water has pushed out any weird flavors from the pads, we're ready to go. 
Once the wine is in the filler, it takes a team of people to work the line. One person fills six bottles at a time, passing them off to the corker, foiler, and labeler. In this case we saved the foiling and labeling for bottling day at Trio Vintners. More on that exciting day in my Next Post! 
The first of 200 cases of wine is filled!
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