Orofino prepares to bottle

racking a world of riesling. Looks
cool, smells amazing!

tartrates (wine diamonds) stuck to the side of the
tank during cold stabilization of
our Gamay 2011 

Over the past couple of weeks we have been busy getting wines ready to bottle. We have booked dates with Artus Bottling, the mobile bottling company we use, so that they will be here February 23rd and 24th. This means that I have a firm date to work towards which has a way of lighting a fire to get things done. Scheduled for bottle is our 2011 Riesling, 2011 Pinot Gris, 2011 Sauvignon Blanc (yes, its back!!), the 2011 Gamay, 2010 Pinot Noir and 2010 Syrah. I have been in the cellar blending the various tanks, finishing cold stabilization, and adding the appropriate amounts of bentonite for protein stabilization. We are pretty stoked on what we have and look forward to releasing the wines in a couple of months! I always hate this time of year in the cellar as I am anxious to finish the wines and have them safe in bottle. To facilitate a quicker and  simpler path to bottle we have hired an Okanagan company to bring their crossflow filter to our winery and do all of the filtering. It seems to be a cost efficient way to filter the whites and gentler on the wines at the same time. "Win win" as they say. We'll post some pics of the process with an evaluation as soon as it happens. Until then a lot of my time is spent with logistics - ordering bottles, capsules, corks, ensuring labels are correct and ready for the bottling date. This sort of work is important as numbers need to be correct or it could result in leftover wine in the tank without somewhere to go! Hasn't happened here yet but it keeps me up at night and I'm sure I take twice as long figuring out these numbers than it would most people. Not my forte so wish us luck!