The Endless Journey of Learning - Le Garage Newsletter 2.13.23
This past Saturday we bottled wine. The bottler we use produces a vacuum which pulls the wine up out of the barrel through plastic tubing. The wine then travels into the mouth of the bottler and into one bottle at a time. There is a canister that holds the vacuum and holds any overflow of wine created during the process. With 1 person at the bottler and 1 at the corker, it takes about 3 hours to bottle one barrel of wine when there are no problems.
In November, when I last bottled, my bottler didn’t work properly. The wine wasn’t moving up through the tubing. I was stressed because we had a lot to do, and it was my responsibility to provide working equipment for my hired crew. We tried the dial which controls the amount of vacuum (which I mistreat just like the tension dial on my sewing machine). We tried everything to get it to work. About 45 minutes into the troubleshooting, I called my friend, then drove to her house to borrow her bottler. We finished 2 barrels that day in 8 hours.
I tried looking at the parts diagram for my bottler thinking I could fix it. That was futile, so I packed it up along with an empty bottle and drove an hour to a friend’s house. We put it together, filled a pan with water, turned it on, and it worked perfectly. It was like going to the doctor for a pain and getting there and the pain is gone. My friend explained how the bottler worked. He showed me O rings, and taught me how to treat the vacuum dial. He explained to me what he thought I had experienced and told me to check the seal on the vacuum canister if it happens again.
Saturday we were on our last barrel and the suction stopped. The man helping me started troubleshooting at the end of the hose like we did last time. I stopped him, got a towel, and wiped the wine from the lip of the canister. When I turned the bottler back on the suction was working! It was so satisfying … as was the half bottle of wine left in the canister which I promptly polished off. This little winery has been an endless journey of learning.
