It takes our whole family a whole day to bottle a batch of wine.  With Robert in Germany, we called a friend of the family, Jeff Holloway, to help when we bottled the St. Pepin.

Here’s how it all works. Bill handles the bottles at the beginning and the end of the line. He dumps the bottles onto the table for Jeff’s easy accessibility. Jeff picks up two bottles at a time and turns them upside down on the sparger.  The sparger does two things: it rinses the bottles out with purified water and then sparges them with nitrogen. Brandon takes the bottles from Jeff two at a time and fits them on to the 6-spout filler. The filler tank fills the bottles with exactly the right volume of wine.

Brandon hands the full bottles to Tammi, who places a metal screw cap on each bottle. She hands the bottles to Anne who uses the capper machine to attach the screw caps, one bottle at a time. She sets the bottle on the platform, presses the buttons, and the capper mechanically crimps the cap onto the bottle.

Anne hands the bottle to Amanda, who puts it on the labeler. She turns the crank to put on the front label, adjusts the bottle, and turns the crank again to apply the back label.

She hands the bottles to Bill who puts them back into the box and stacks the boxes on the pallet.

That’s it! Every bottle of Soldier Creek Wine is lovingly touched be 6 pairs of hands!

P.S. I didn’t tell you about the two hours of cleaning and sanitizing before we actually bottle and the two hours of cleaning and sanitizing after we’re finished. That could be a post on its own. Luckily for us, we can have a glass of wine at the end of the day to celebrate our hard work!