Bottling

Mountain Rose will never be a threat to Gallo, or even Chateau Morrisette up in Floyd County.  It's a small, family winery, and that's what it always wants to be.  Bottling is small-scale, but very, very labor intensive.  Three machines in the MRV bottling room take a person each to operate, plus steps before, after, and in-between each with its own person attached.  David says that even if MRV had a fully-automated bottling process, the process itself requires folks at every step of the way. We're neither a GM factory nor the Lucy episode in the candy factory.  Here's what happens.

Boxes with bottles come into the winery.  Joe (formerly of Albuquerque and before that Utah) here is turning the box upside down to empty the bottles onto the table where the next person

injects inert gas into each one, the purpose of which is to get air out of the bottle.  This little machine takes two at a time after which he hands them off to

 the "cow" which has six teats (my name and my description 'cuz I don't know what it's really called) and is the most automated part of the process.  Volunteer Seta (who summers in Wise with her husband who's from this area, but lives in the Virginia Beach area) attaches each bottle to a teat and wine flows into each bottle with a sensor stopping the flow when an individual bottle is full.   As she pulls off each bottle, she hands it off to

the capper (who lives down in Tennessee which is just a short jaunt away), who puts a cap on the top of each bottle, and then hands the bottle over to the person running the machine that actually screws the cap onto the bottle. 

Here kinfolk Doug opens the door, inserts the bottle, closes the door,

pushes the button....  Voila!

 The potential "Lucy in the candy factory" moment could occur here, but somehow we manage to keep a smooth pace.  MRV does not use cork, either real cork or plastic cork.  Purists, of course, may be appalled, but even 20 years ago, my cousin who was VP for bottling at a very well-know Napa Valley winery told me that screw caps were as good as cork.  And they do not require rooting around for  a cork screw or trying to figure out how to open a bottle when the cork screw has disappeared! 

The capped bottle is wiped with a cloth by kinfolk Clint and then goes back into

a box which has been carried around the back way from its dumping at the beginning of the line, the bottle handled by Rosita (who's from the Navajo Reservation out by Grants, NM), wife of Joe.  

 I avoid the machine jobs.  Sticking bottles in boxes is about my skill level!!

Small family wineries wouldn't survive without volunteers.  All these folks are volunteers, including those of us who are kinfolk.  Suzanne provides a good lunch for all, kinfolk Doug makes bad jokes, and we keep on bottlin'.