Road Trip - Le Garage Newsletter 1.6.23

We are ready to bottle this weekend!  In preparation, I borrowed the family truck to pick up the bottles. This is a 1991 Ford Truck with the name “Tin Can.”  My instructions were “it’s geared high … you’ll see” and “don’t put more than 1200 pounds in it”. 

In the pouring rain I left in the Tin Can heading for Hammonton, New Jersey.  It wasn’t a terrible trip.  I did spin out on a hill, maybe drove the clutch too hard, and I missed my turn onto the Benjamin Franklin Bridge but got to the distributor safely.

The bottles were empty, so I wasn’t worried about the Tin Can’s weight restriction.  As the forklift dropped the pallet of bottles onto the truck and I watched the space between the wheel and the bed of the truck shrink drastically, I had some concern.  We did fine and now I know I can pick up 50 cases of empty bottles with the Tin Can next time.

Not 15 minutes into the drive home, I noticed in the driver side mirror that the plastic wrap that was around the cases of bottles was beginning to unravel.  It was floating behind the truck like a 6-foot trail of toilet paper stuck on someone’s shoe. It was still raining, and I began to envision the cardboard boxes dissolving in the rain and bottles dropping one by one off the back of the truck but that didn’t happen.

We are bottling the last barrel of 2021 Felicity tomorrow and I have also decided to bottle my 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon.  This wine won a Silver Medal in the 2022 Finger Lakes Wine Competition and subsequently spent another 8 months in the barrel.  It tastes amazing! 

In two more weeks, we are bottling again. My checklist for that trip in the Tin Can is: 50 cases clear of bottles, wrap the plastic myself before the pallet is dropped on the truck, don’t go in the rain, and don’t forget $2.60 in change for the stupid Winslow New Jersey Toll.