Bottling wine is a very time-consuming and tedious task, and maintaining the quality of the wine during and after the bottling process is one of the most important priorities to winemakers. The goal is to protect the wine from oxidation as much as possible. Since bottling is the last phase of the winemaking process,
one mistake can ruin an entire tank of wine, wasting months and even years of hard work. To help eliminate some of the stress, many winemakers will hire an outside bottling company to bottle their wines.
We recently hired our own bottling truck to bottle our new Tramonto and Seyval Blanc wines, and I discovered that the bottling process is actually very fascinating...
The first step is to sterilize and cleaning the bottles with micro-filtered water, before drying them out with an air shot. Afterwards, 99.8% of nitrogen is added to the bottle, which protects the purity of the wine.
The next step is filling the bottles by pumping wine from our wine tanks.
Next is corking; a small amount of nitrogen fills the bottle, which will avoid any oxidation process due to the oxygen. Another air shot is administered to eliminate any residual cork dust. After the bottles are corked, they're then capped and labeled, and ready to be sealed.
Finally, the bottles are packaged until they're ready to be sold. We are expecting the Tramonto to be ready any day now, and our Seyval Blanc is already available online and in our restaurant!
