Preparing for Bottling

The past couple of weeks we have been consistently busy racking wines from barrels into tanks to prepare them for bottling.  ‘Racking’ is the wine-making operation of removing clear wine from the settled sediment or lees in the bottom of the barrel.  After the barrels have been racked (emptied) the sediment is rinsed out with hot water. The barrels are then allowed to drip dry before re-filling. We will be bottling 10 different wines the second week in February.

In between daily cellar tasks this week we have had a great opportunity to shovel snow. For some of you this may not sound very exciting but we seldom see any of the fluffy white stuff.

Andy Slusarenko, Assistant Winemaker