1999 HERITAGE RED BOTTLING LINE in 2000

_____Out of the fields and into the winery! It's time to work in the shade and everybody is willing. We only bottle five to seven days each year, so we hire Signature Mobile to bring their trailer to the winery. We pump the wine from the barrels into a steel tank and hook up another pump (partially shown in the lower left) to the filters in the trailer. The orange tanks you see are full of nitrogen which gets injected into the bottles to protect the finished wine from spoiling.

ON THE LINE

LEFT: Empty bottles are loaded onto the line. Gas is injected into the bottles to create a clean holding environment. The wine is pumped in super fast and then corked before you can say "Salud!" RIGHT: Aaron puts a foil on each and every bottle that goes past him. A "spinner" then comes down around the neck of each bottle and rubs the foils really hard so they cannot be easily removed.

THE BOTTLING LINE CONTINUES ON...

We have use pressure sensitive labels, instead of glue, on the labels. You can see the wild turkey images there on that roll - the bottles simply move by the application area and they're ready for the store shelf! Philip is shown measuring the label's height from the bottom of the bottle. He, his partners, and our crew inspect all parts of the line the entire time to ensure uniformity between each bottle.

END OF THE LINE

The bottles are hand-nestled back into the cases. The boxes are sent under a tape gun and rolled on down to get stamped, stickered & stacked. Red wine goes into bottle shock for little while after it's bottled, so you won't taste this vintage of Heritage Red right away.