Yesterday, Aug 12, 2007, was a new moon (the best time for bottling because the moon's gravitational pull is the lightest). This helps keep the gunk at the bottom of the barrel out of the wine that gets bottled. The gunk (or "lees" as it's called in the trade) is made up of dead yeast cells, char from the inside of the barrel, and solid tannin (tiny bits of grape skin and seed fragments that settled from the end of winemaking 10 months ago).
The steps that we finished today were: blending, filling, argon administration, cork-setting, and capsule-setting.
Thanks to: Marissa Levinson, The Birch Family, The Eaton Family, Joy and Mike, Ernie, Chub, Jack & Audrey, Carol Werner, Derek & Emily, Heather & Brent Horowitz, and Tim. We bottled 50 cases in four hours!
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