Several of us met Sunday morning at Gary's to bottle 35 cases of our 2013 zinfandel wine. We had a lot of help thus the work went quickly. After setting up the equipment and ensuring everything was clean, we proceeded with the bottling.
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The three red thorny things are bottle rinsers/drying trees. Towards the back of the garage are bottle fillers, a corker and the labeling area.
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Above, the pump pulls the wine from the barrel to the stainless steel tank.
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From the steel tank to the left of John, the wine is pumped into Enolmatic bottle fillers.
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Jeff cleaning the bottles with SO2 and hanging them on the drying tree.
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Empty bottles set up to fill, John manning the bottle filler station and Steve corking. Karl, in the middle, is production control - ensuring the bottles are filled correctly.
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The rest of the bottling crew putting on labels and boxing the wine.
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John, taste-testing the final product.
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After loading up our cars with nearly five cases each, we had a barbecue. We sampled the new wine, and had salad, deviled eggs, backed beans and huge hamburgers. All-in-all, a very productive day.
