Pinot Noir Bottling

Last week was an exciting week here at Dry River, we bottled our 2014 Dry River Pinot noir ready for our en primeur release in the first week of November.

The Dry River Pinot noir is a blend of three vineyards, Dry River, Craighall and Lovat with all three contributing their specific vineyard characteristics to the final wine. This wine was hand harvested in March last year and has been aged for 12 months in French Oak with 20% new.

It is our largest wine varietal, a total of 11,000 bottles over two days. All of the winery and vineyard staff get involved, and fill 600 bottles per hour – so you do the math! With eyes on each bottle every step of the way, you will see in the video clip the staff involvement and the checks and measures that are in place to ensure consistency. The bottles are stacked upright initially and you will hear Wilco explain a little more about this in the clip. Some of the wine is then labelled and boxed up ready to be sent out to our mail order customers who purchased it en primeur, with the rest of the wine stored away ready for our Autumn release.

Not included in the 11,000 bottle count were the limited number of double magnums we bottled, using a slightly more hands on approach. Wilco uses the hand operated corking machine here to insert the corks into the bottles.

These bottles will then be labelled and stored till we put them to good use later in the year. You will hear a bit more from us about that next month. 

If you do get your hands on a double magnum bottle, the chances are you will look as pleased as Wilco does. It is definitely one to save for a special occasion.