It's day two of bottling. All I can say is I am going to appreciate every bottle of wine a lot more from now on. Scott Neil (the co-owner of Coeur de Terre) once told me that every vine on their estate is touched by human hands 12-13 times every year. Wine making is a "hands on" business. Likewise, I calculate that each bottle is handled six or seven times. One guy takes the full case and turns it up side down onto the feed table. The next guy shoots nitrogen into the bottle. Then it's placed on the carousel where it is filled. Someone then places it in the corking machine and then another person (like me) cleans it with a towel. Next it is placed in the labeling machine, then someone places a capsule over the cork and yet another person places it in the "capsule roll" which gently firms the metal cap into place. The last person in line places the bottles in boxes, glues them shut and stacks them on the pallet. That's a lot of hands.I'm back on bottle cleaning duty. I've watched the other guys do it. They place the bottle on the table and rub up and down . I don't do it that way. I grab the bottle and place it against my chest and rub it (which created the groovy pattern above). Today I wonder why I'm doing that. I try the other way. In about five minutes my back is killing me. The height of the table is perfect if you are about five foot seven. If you're six one you are leaning over the whole time.
During a lull in the action when the labeling machine is jammed up I try the capsule roll. It is much harder than it looks. You have to push it into the center of the machine at just the right speed. "That was too slow" Scott says as he fights with the labeling machine. On my second try I hear, "That was too fast." And sure enough both capsules are wrinkled and marred. As production starts back up I'm mysteriously back on bottle cleaning detail. As I'm wiping about the six thousandth bottle I think, "This is so easy a three year old could do it." And just on cue Tallulah comes running into the cellar. She watches Martin for about 3 seconds and then grabs a bottle and places it on the nitrogen injector,
then hands it off with a huge smile. I haven't been around three year olds for a while. They move fast! Tallulah is at the bottling station one second, helping to clean the bottles in the next,
and then handing bottles to Roberto at the labeling machine. The guys on the crew are clearly at ease with little girls. They count in Spanish with her. I clock out at 11, Tallulah is going strong at 14. She beams up at her Dad and says, "look, I'm working!" Scott asks if she wants to go and work on her ballet, and she's out of the cellar in a flash.
Scott has borrowed a new labeling machine for the day. The retail price tag of $4995.00 is still on it. The Capsule Roll machine likewise has a tag of $1295.00. The price of the bottling machine was a factor of ten times that. Why would anyone purchase all of that equipment? I'm at a loss until I have a conversation with Lisa Neal (the other co-owner of Coeur de Terre). She tells me that last year the vineyard turned it's first profit. Eleven years in business and finally they made more than they put in. But they didn't keep it long. Scott and Lisa decided to give their employees health care. "It just seemed like the right thing to do" Lisa said. I'm impressed. We haven't even been able to do that at our church employees yet.
At the end of the day we are running out of capsules. It's a constant nightmare because one thing is always running in short supply which brings everything to a standstill. Scott is sure he ordered 20,000 of the little suckers, so we search everywhere for them. He finally calls the company in California. Turns out they weren't delivered yet. In fact they haven't arrived in the U.S. yet. They are on a boat from France and will arrive in November sometime. So, Scott decided to box up the rest of the wine with labels, but to not glue the boxes shut. He tells me to place a sign on the pallet with the words "in bond." I ask what that means. Scott explains that they are going to pay taxes on that wine yet. Technically if he didn't pay his tax bill the government could come after the wine in bond and sell it to pay the taxes. Scott tells me that this will work out because he can have the crew finish off the bottles when it's slow at the vineyard. And it strikes me. One of the reasons Scott has decided to bottle his own wine is because it keeps his crew working. Bottling is something you can do at anytime, and doing it yourself during the slow times keeps the crew employed year round.
I'm a tired puppy by the end of the day, but I take some time to walk out into the vineyard and just sit. It is so beautiful. The sun may not last much longer, so I try to soak it in and enjoy it. I taste some grapes. They are coming along. We may be a week or so from harvest.
The wine storage company showed up today around 2:00. We loaded four full pallets of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir onto the truck. That's almost 2,700 bottles, and I've touched every single one of them. That's a feeling of accomplishment. I'd feel a whole lot better if we were somewhere near half way done.