Our members are well aware of what happens during the Autumn months around here. But what about the other 9 months of the year? Winemaking is a four season affair and wine is the summation of a thousand decisions made throughout the year. Sara and I would like to bring you into the fold–to give our Wine Club members a look under the hood. This blog post is original content created just for you. It will be a Quarterly and will cover a range of topics germane to the winegrowing/winemaking process. Best case scenario: it deepens your appreciation for what we do. Worst case: look at the pretty pictures! 😉
Spring Bottling
Winter begins with rest and rejuvenation—a necessary pause after completing harvest and prepping the wines for their winter slumber. As soon as the mustard flowers begin their parade through wine country (late January/early February), we know our early Spring Bottling is close at hand.
Bottling is integral to what we do, but it’s an exercise no winemaker particularly enjoys. It’s full left brain. Dotting I’s. Crossing T’s. And bracing for what feels like the inevitable mishap. The process begins about six months out. That’s the “new normal” for lead times on ordering our domestic glass. There’s some guesswork involved here, because we’re placing orders against tonnage we think will be coming in from the vineyards many months later. Often times we miss, but experience has taught us that if you miss, always miss long. Better to own a couple extra pallets of glass, than to run short on bottling day!
A few months later it’s time to assemble more parts. Our capsules, labels, and corks all come from different vendors. All domestic. All with slightly different lead times and supply chain challenges. It’s long been reported that there is a cork shortage, but what surprised us this year was a paper shortage!? Two options were put on the table: (1) Wait for the paper we have been using and delay our spring bottling. Or (2) keep the spring bottling dates and use a different paper. We opted for #2. Delayed bottlings often lead to product outages, which affects our cashflow and the entire distribution chain—in particular our wholesaler partners who depend on us for continuity of product. When LIOCO runs out of Sonoma County Chardonnay, that affects hundreds of hard working sales reps who have won precious placement on wine lists and retail shelves. Buyers are quick to replace wines and slow to bring them back. So…the show must go on!
One month out, it’s time to evaluate all of the scheduled wines for stability. Our goal is to capture the incredible freshness and purity that wine in the barrel possesses, and usher it to bottle with as little intervention as possible. We generally achieve this. But we also vet this out at the lab via a test known as a “full panel” that shows what exactly is in the wine. There are some generally accepted principles for stability that intersect with the wine’s pH, total acidity, SO2, malic acid, and all the various microbes active in the wine. Some microbes are good, some are bad. This is where some risk assessment comes into play. We generally don’t want to filter a wine, but sometimes the numbers require it. The worst case scenario for a vintner is sending an unstable wine out into the world. Exploding bottles do not engender repeat customers 😉 .
Bottling day is when all of this choreography comes together for the main event. The more wines we bottle on any given day, the more opportunities there are for error. Wrong cork, right bottle? Labels wound on the wrong spool side? Did we order enough glass? Are the pallets in good shape? Our production team knows how to kick the tires ahead of time which minimizes surprises on bottling day. Then we caffeinate, focus, and stand watch. The best bottle day is the one my phone doesn’t ring. No news is good news ;). This time, we bottled 7 wines without a hitch! We look forward to sharing them with you.
~ Matt & Sara
