Bottle, Bottle, Bottle

Well this is going to be a busy weekend...

tonight, my brothers and I are taking my Mom out to dinner for her birthday. She definitely needs the break as she is minding my father who has Alzheimer's. Should be fun.

After dinner I have plans to see fireworks in town. It goes off at 10pm, so I hope to be done with dinner by then.

Tomorrow, I am hosting a bottling party. Seems everybody wants to bottle. I guess with the holiday coming up, folks are interested in having some wine. The goal is 42 cases.

For food tomorrow, the plan is to take up a collection and simply send out for pizza. It is getting difficult to bottle and also take care of feeding everybody. If anybody has any suggestions to make this easier, I welcome them.

Sunday, It is up to the brother's for lobster.

Monday, I plan on waking up and wondering...."just where in the heck did the weekend go???" as I slide into depression over another long work week.

John -
You definitely have alot going on this weekend ! How many people are you planning on feeding ?

I took off today in order to help the wife out, we are having my son graduation party on Saturday. We are expected to have approx 150 people show up throughout the day. We are having italian beefs, chicken and lasagna, for the main course. These are all being picked up prior to the party.

JohnT said:

The goal is 42 cases.

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Wow, that is a TON of wine. Do you gift most of that John?
I am lucky to go through 10 cases in a year.

Have fun with your mom.

I make wine for the whole family... 2 brothers, my parents, myself, 2 cosines, and a variety of nieces and nephews. This year, we all threw in together.

This is typical of how my weekends are going. I guess that I shouldn't complain...

I plan on having 11 people or so...

Is that the wine from the fall or spring last year?

Pictures or it didn't happen. lol

What are you bottling?

Weekend of 6/26-6/28 part 1

Well, my prediction was correct, it was a busy weekend..

Friday - It was "summer hours" at work, so I got out of work early. I needed to get a load of bottles for Saturday and also some flowers for Mom's birthday. Fortunately, there is a place that is on the way home where I can get both.. Corrado's...

Corrado's is simply amazing. There is the winemaking/homebrewing supply shop, and the grocery market just across the street. The market is my real weakness. It is much like the old Italian markets you see in old photos of NYC, and have stuff you can never find in any standard grocery store. I can spend HOURS in this place.

So, to make a long story short, I went into the market for flowers and left with a veal roast, quail, sausage wheels, mushrooms, eggplant, salami, 4 different cheeses, 2 loaves of French bread, pitted dates, vacu packed gnocci, and assorted other stuff. We ate well.

After making it home, and unloading the groceries, I went into town and got my hair cut. From there, I headed down to Mom's, and took her out to dinner with the two brothers. That dinner meant the world to Mom. The place was a BYOB, so I brought a 2009 brunello di montalcino from my "super secret stash".

After I got home from diner, I had just enough time to change and head out for the town's fireworks show (always the weekend before 7/4). Got home by 11:30 and simply passed out.

huh?

Part 2

Saturday,

Up at 5am. Started setting up for the bottling session that was about to come. Got all equipment clean and sanitized, the winery scrubbed down, and (most importantly) put on a pot of coffee.

The bottling was to being at 9am, but I asked the brother over an hour early to help set up. By 8:30, we started to bottle with just the two of us and by 9am I had a full crew.

I use an assembly line process for bottling. I find that with a crew of 6, We can really crank out the corkings! Here is how it goes..

1 or 2 folks sanitize and place empty bottles on the bottle tree,

1 person takes a bottle off of the tree, and fills it using the enolmatic filler (fills at a rate of 3 second per bottle). The bottle is then slid down the counter to the next person.

The next person tops off/ adjusts the level of the wine to be 1 finger's width above the shoulder of the bottle. The topped bottle is then slid down the counter to the next person

The next person corks the bottle and then gives it a quick dunk in a water bath (just to clean it off). The corked bottle is then slid down the counter to the next person.

The next person wipes off the bottle, and boxes it. Once a box is filled, it is marked with a sharpie with the year/vintage.

We bottled 2 wines, our 2013 cabernet and our 2013 brunello (or san gio blend). Our goal was 42 cases. We ended up doing 45. This assembly line process really works! We finished up by noon. Looking at the number of bottles, and the amount of time it took, it was easy to figure that we bottled at a rate of 2.57 bottle per minute. Not too shabby.

The clean up went very quickly. In no time the crew had the winery back in pristine condition. Clean up always goes quick because once the cleaning is done, the real fun begins. The chairs are formed into a circle and we visit some of the older vintages. We even had a look toward the future and tasted all 4 of the 2014 wines (to be bottled next year).

Luck for all of them, I went nuts at the market on Friday. I set out the salami, the cheeses, and the pitted dates for folks to nosh on. By around 3pm, some had gone home, but I still had 7 so I decided to scrap the plan of sending out for pizza and, instead, cooked the veal roast I got at the market. Half the crew wanted to watch me cook, so glasses in hand we made the climb up to the kitchen.

I took the veal roast, seasoned with salt and pepper, and brown all sides of the meat in butter. I then added chicken stock and a full bottle of white wine. I brought that up to the simmer on the stove top, added about 3 pounds of fresh mushrooms, covered the pot and place into a 275 degree oven to braze for 3 hours. Once the kitchen was tidied up, it was back down to the winery to rejoin with the others.

Man did we have a great time!!!! songs, jokes, stories. It is fun...

at 6pm, I took the roast out, checked to find it at the PERFECT tenderness. I took the roast out of the pot, reduced the brazing liquid for 5 minutes, then added 2 packets of vacu-sealed potato gnocci. It was simply delicious!

The evening ended around 1am with the last few stragglers deciding to spend the night.

Here are tow pictures. The first one is taken just after clean up. The second/third are pics of the veal roast...

Part 3

Sunday

On Sunday, I relaxed then spent most of the day making my eggplant parm for the stragglers that remained..

I start with my own sauce made with herbs right off my deck. Once the sauce is ready, I peal and slice the eggplant and place each slice between paper towels to dry. this step ensures that the eggplant parm comes out firm.

I then flour/egg/bread crumb each slice and then fry them to a golden brown. Once all frying is finished, I then assemble the dish by laying down a single layer of eggplant, coat each slice with sauce, a thin slice of mutz. every three layers, I added a dusting of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and parm cheese.

Once complete, I bake for 1 hour at 325. Served with imported rigatoni pasta and my 2014 Chilean cab.. see picture.

geek said:

huh?

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Not sure what you are saying here Geek....

We were wondering which one you were bottling....

JohnT said:

[and my 2014 Chilean cab..

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For a wine that hasn't been bottled yet, you seem to be enjoying it a lot lately.

BB- We bottled the 2014 Chilean cab. At 12 months, it was too good to let sit.

Geek - I though I answered that in part 2. We bottled 2013 California cabernet and California "brunello" (80% san gio 10% metlot, 10% petit sarah).

JohnT said:

BB- We bottled the 2014 Chilean cab. At 12 months, it was too good to let sit.

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Gotcha. I saw you'd just bottled some 2013's and assumed you hadn't gotten to 2014 yet. Must have been a good year. I just bottled 3 gallons of my 2014 Chilean Cab/Merlot on Saturday. The remaining 6 gallons came out of the barrel the same day and will be bottled in a few weeks. It's really good!

Normally age 2 years, but this stuff was simply too good to wait. Also, we needed to empty the tank for the 2015 Chilean.

Last Friday (7/3), I had a small crew over to do some bottling. This time it was only about 20 cases or so.

Although the bottling was light, the after party was heavy. We had some great BBQ (see the "what's for dinner" thread for pictures) and did a little more than sip through some great vintages.

Below is John (not me) taken when the after party was in full swing. He found a quiet place to hibernate!