I had a nice time last weekend wandering the woods. I spent Sunday with the Maine Mycological Association on a foray for wild mushrooms, then some hikes looking for wild teas and edibles on Monday.
Tuesday it was back to work. I have been researching many products I want to develop and have been seeking out old texts on distilling, wine making, etc. I spent my mornings brainstorming and working on possible recipes. I won’t say what they are quite yet, but when I get them into production in a few months, I’ll tell you more.
Tuesday afternoon we got in a nice large shipment of glass. Bottles that is. There is a bit of a global glass shortage and we have had certain wine bottles on back order for months and months; especially needed are the 375 ml. frosted bottles for one of our dessert wines, raspberry Rain. We haven’t been able to meet the demand and actually took it off our current list for almost five months since we didn’t have any bottles. We do have a full tank of the wine aging in the cellar, so bottling is the focus for the week.
Photo gallery at end of post
A huge 53 foot semi made the delivery. It’s amazing how good truck drivers are. Watching how he backed up to our loading dock, when the parking lot is less wide than the truck, was quite entertaining. then we had to get the six pallet loads of glass off of the truck and onto our loading dock, which is also the brewery and distillery.
After we got the glass into the distillery it had to get moved to the basement. One case at a time. The area that is becoming the brewery and distillery used to be the glass storage area. formerly, pallets could be left there, waiting until the bottles were needed. Now the pallets have to be unloaded and the cases taken to the basement for storage.
This is back-breaking work. We knew we would all be sore the next day. If we had more people it would have gone faster, but not much smoother. On this day I unloaded the cases from the pallets, starting with them higher than my head, and stacked them four or five high so Mike could grab them with a hand truck. He took them 20 feet, through two doors, to the extra long flight of stairs to the basement; and would then chuck them downstairs.
Our basement/winery is almost two stories underground and it’s a long, long, flight of stairs. Mike had many years ago set up a chute to slide the glass down, underground. It works quite well, and we only had one case of 375 ml. bottles crash, with three broken bottles. It’s funny, but by the sound I knew that it had only been a few bottles that broke. I had yelled out that it sounded like only two broke, and I was on the other side of the building at the time. After working off and on in the wine industry since I was 18, I have picked up an ear for the sound of breakers; and I don’t mean ocean waves.
Jody was at the bottom in the fast moving position. Here you have to watch the cases come sliding down the chute and hope the are moving slowly enough and well balanced enough that the come to a rest after sliding across the basement floor. Hopefully not with enough speed to ram into the wall ten feet from the bottom of the chute. As the cases coming sliding willy-nilly down the chute and across the floor, you have to grab them and stack them neatly on a new pallet. The guys upstairs can always move faster unloading and chucking the cases, than the guy at the bottom can stack them. It’s a nice cardio workout.
Mike has plans to set up roller tracks with curves, so that once the brewery and distillery are up and running it will only take one person on top to send the cases downstairs where they will line up, waiting to be stacked on pallets. Until then, it’s a big job.
While I was unloading the pallets I made the discovery that some of the boxes are packed upside down. When the bottles are shipped they don’t have the tops of the cases sealed, so if you were to pick up an upside down case, the bottles will fall right out of the “bottom.” Interestingly, some of the cases are upside down and labeled “This Side Up.” Well my first experience with this was with champagne bottles. These are some of the heaviest bottles around with thick glass and solid bottoms to the bottles. I grabbed the case and as I was in motion I could tell that something was wrong by the feel and balance. The bottles started to fly out of the open bottom of the case as I tried to save them. Without thinking I threw my leg and foot into the way of the cascade of bottles, somehow managing to keep all but one from breaking. Note: next time let the bottles all break. Your left foot is worth more than the glass. Ouch! So I limped around for the rest of the day as we manhandled the glass downstairs.
The next few days were spent in frantic bottling of raspberry rain. We had hundreds of back orders to fill, so we took turns working the bottling stations. Much of the time it was Jody and I, so Mike could work on finishing building the circulation system for the brewery/distillery; as well as assorted paperwork, graphic design of new product labels, etc. The specialty wines in 375 ml. bottles are a nuisance to fill. regular bottles move along fast and steady. the larger bottles take a bit longer to fill and cork, so the labeling and capsule stations can keep up with the flow and even get ahead and fill cases and stack them on pallets. With the small bottles it takes half as long to fill and cork them, but just as long to label and heat seal the capsules on top. So there are fits and starts to the line and it doesn’t run as smoothly. Also it takes twice as long to bottle a case, since there are 24, not 12 bottles in each.
As time goes by you don’t see the cases piling up as fast as normal, and it gets mind-numbing because you feel that nothing is getting accomplished. By the time a few hours are gone you feel like the vacuum corking machine has sucked out your brains, to be replaced by the CO2 used to blast the bottles clean and dry. I was so spacey that when I went to check the tank of wine to see how much was left, I literally couldn’t tell if was 1/3, 1/4, or 1/5 still to go and gave up. I then wandered around in a daze for 15 minutes, before heading home to sort photos of mushrooms out and try to find out which were which from my field guides.
