Welcome friends to another winery blog from Dacalier Wine Co.   Last saturday was our long awaited bottling day for our 2009 Dacalier Premiere Rose and Eric & me are big fans of prepping as much as possible especially when it comes to bottling day.    We wanted to make sure the rose was filtered and ready to roll on Saturday, so on Friday, we were at the winery until 9:30pm getting the course filtration and the sterile filtration completed, a quick cleaning of the tanks and we were ready for Saturday.

We managed to order up some beautiful weather and a few of our friends took time out of their busy schedule to give us a little help.   I want to thank Jeff, Milos and Deux Punks(Aaron & Dan)  for helping us out.  We couldnt have done it without all of you, so thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
 
Well the bottling truck arrived bright and early and everything looked like it was going to go without a hitch, we had some donuts, steam cleaned the bottle filler and had the hoses all connected.   All we had to do was align the labeler to the bottles and turn on the pumps.   

Well after an hour, and about 75 labels later, it was determined that the sensor is mucked up and we had to move forward without the labels on the bottles.  We managed to save most of the labels which were used to label the cases.  

Now that we finally got a chance to get started,  we put someone at each station and got the bottling line humming along. Lisa kept the empty bottles flowing while Jeff (with cap) was doing the sparging and Milos (shades) ran the corker like he had done it before.   Actually Milos has a few years experience from the Paso Robles area, so he was a great asset to have this weekend  
Dan was filling the cases while Aaron and I were labeling the boxes and placing them on the pallet.  

We almost had a full pallet when all of  sudden  a bang comes from the filler and the rose starts pouring out of the filler bowl.    “SHUT OFF THE PUMP”  Luckily, Paul was closest to the pump kept us from losing too much wine.   We all took a break while Rob determined that the sensor on the filler blew and  because Rob and Paul knew how to fix these kinds of things, we were back online in about 20 minutes.

Within the the next hour, we sparged, filled bottles, corked and filled, stacked and labeled the cases.   We did manage to get our 90 cases bottled, which was great because we thought maybe we would come up short after the spill.    I am sorry I didnt get as many pictures as I would have liked, but I was busy on the line with the rest of the team.    We have the wine in thebottle resting safely in the winery and Rob will return to label thebottles when he gets the labeler sensor repaired and we are on schedulefor a release date of April 28th.    Just in time for Rose season.

We finished up our weekend by writing tasting notes and I think the best way to describe the 2009 Dacalier Premiere Rose is floral with hints strawberry and tropical notes, well balanced with a silky elegant medium finish.  We can’t wait for this release and look forward to pouring it for you this spring.

Be on the look out for another spring BBQ at the Punk Dog Winery in the next 6-8 weeks.  They are always a blast. 

If you get a chance to get tickets for Pink Out 2010 in San Francisco, held by the Rose Avenger and Producers, we will be pouring along with 40 other Rose producers.  It is sure to be a blast.   
You can get tickets here: PINK OUT 2010 Tuesday May 11th @ Butterfly in SF

Cheers,
Dave