Wine Making: Bottles and Bottles

Sunday, March 14th, marked my second day of City Winery labor.

I was the first to arrive of, what turned out to be 6, volunteers. I stood around, silent and awkward, for about fifteen minutes until the equipment was set. I am not generally a quiet person but when not on my turf, I have a tendency to disappear into the background. Eventually the rest showed up and we put ourselves into a groove of bottling barrel upon barrel of 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon.

I placed myself on the end of the assembly line for the responsibility of wiping down the bottles after they were corked and boxing them up. I placed myself here because I was able to observe the rhythm the corker set for the bottler (a position I was eventually encouraged to take over).

It's backwards, actually. Everything starts the same way, with the dumper. This time, however, they are dumping empty bottles. The empties are placed into the pump which resembles a 12 uttered metal cow. Once the bottles are full with wine, they are handed to the corker who has the duty of checking the level of liquid, caring for the pressure gauge on the corking vacuum, and passing along a properly corked bottle.

The role of cleanliness played a great deal today. Every element from our hands to materials to machines had to be carefully watched so not to be contaminated. In fact, David got upset when someone (who was just trying to help) handled a bag of corks improperly - the entire bag (about 500 corks) had to be thrown out. Ironically, the person who handled the corks happens to be the only person who can handle the kosher wine. Interesting observation.

Note to self: though wine has an alcohol content, it is extremely delicate and must be handled with the utmost care and attention.

Ok, so back to the process. We undoubtedly found our zen and consistent rhythm after inevitable breaks. When levels of wine became low we had to stop and start back up. The point was made that for every hour of work (bottling, labeling, topping, whatever) there is about twenty minutes of downtime for readjustment and replenishment.

David buzzed around us and managed our work with ease and experience. I love watching him. He's been doing this his entire life and around the world.

Perhaps that is why I'm so silent - I really want to learn. I don't want to miss a moment of what they do when a machine breaks down or how they flip a box or even how the stamp is set up. I don't care how mundane the action seems or how insignificant it is... it can't be insignificant.