Bottling Day at Lake Chelan
A Spring Winery Ritual
It happens every spring. Thousands of gallons of premium Lake Chelan wine flows from tank to bottle. Bottling day is a winemaker’s harvest. After months of patient care, a year’s worth of livelihood is safely stored. This year I found a deeper truth on the bottling line.
Final Gallons of 2018 Tunnel Hill Viognier in Tank Before Bottling
The Mobile Bottler
A few months after the first robins return, Bill Hamlin rolls into the valley at the helm of a semi-truck.
Inside his trailer rest the machines that bring us wine each summer: filler & corker, capsule spinner, labeler. A small conveyor belt links everything together collecting empty wine bottles on one end and sending out full bottles with labels on the other.
The collection of whirling gears, cams, and electric motors in that trailer can be mesmerizing.
But equally mesmerizing is the man behind them. Bill blows in each spring like Mary Poppins. Gruff and no-nonsense, he has little patience for fluff. But Bill lives to bottle good wine and work with the winemakers who make it.
Assembly Line Work
When the big day arrives, Bill provides the machines and know-how, but the winery brings everything else. Wine, bottles, capsules & corks (sometimes screw caps), labels, and most critically, lots of hands.
Bottling wine is basic assembly line work. And the robots have yet to arrive in Lake Chelan. A crew of six to eight works best.
Jobs inside the trailer like “dumping glass” and setting capsules are warmer on cold days, but also are located in close proximity to deafening machine noise.
Outside, the work is quieter, but heavier. Young backs work best stacking hundreds of cases of wine on pallet after pallet.
If you belong to a wine club locally, you may have been given the opportunity to help out on bottling day. Wineries welcome having a few extra set of hands.
But the novelty generally wears off after about three hours. It is the rare wine enthusiast that re-enlists the following spring.
Tunnel Hill
My father started Tunnel Hill Winery in 2003. I helped him build our facilities and make wine a decade ago. This spring marked the first time for me back on the bottling line. My brother and I traded off as the “glass dumpers” and fed case after case of empties into the waiting conveyor belt.
Standing there on the line, I watched a year’s worth of hard work, photosynthesis, and fermentation go into the bottle. I thought of the harvests of my youth when thousands of bins of Red Delicious rolled into the packing shed in Chelan. And I thought of my grandpa and great-grandpa, doing the same work in the orchard, but with fewer tools, more sweat, and less reward.
Language of the Land
Those who earn a living from the land understand its unspoken language. The language is raw, at times lovely, at times brutal, always humbling.
All of us sense this language subtly with each new season. But for those who still depend on nature for livelihood, the voice is more primal. I always wondered how my grandpa had such a good memory of the weather from past growing seasons. But then I started farming and the cycles became seared in my mind as well.
As long as one’s harvest is exposed to the weather, rest is not possible. Only after the harvest has been safely stored does the soul exhale in relief and gratitude.
Bottling day is that day of rest for the winemaker. The long season of growing sweet grapes is over. The long days of harvest and crush are over. The long nights of winter and racking and blending are over. Finally, the wine is safe in the bottle.
Standing on the bottling line, I reflected on how I wasn’t called to follow in my dad’s footsteps and take over the winery. We each have a place of professional resonance in life and the fine art of entomology and running a small winery was not my place.
But I also reflected on the lessons I learned on my journey. For a few years, I fretted over the weather, the yeast, and troublesome vintages. I lived with the untamed language of the land that dad, grandpa, and great-grandpa knew their whole lives.
I may not be following in my dad’s footsteps, but I am a better man for walking in them for a while.
