Journal | August 7, 2021
Bottling
Last week we bottled. It was wonderfully boring. A boring day is as good as it gets. There are lots of moving parts on our bottling line, and if one of those parts does not move the way it is supposed to move, our boring day becomes a stressful day.
This is why winemakers don’t sleep well the night before bottling. This is the final phase of years of work. Bottling can’t really improve the wine, but it can diminish a great wine if there are problems.
The wine is safe now and we can move on to prepping for harvest and crush. August bottling is the shifting point. We retreat from the vineyard and become cellar dwellers. We clean, move a lot of heavy stuff, and repair the things we should have fixed during the winter when we had more time but were too tired.
This year we are especially excited as the dry weather has given us beautifully balanced vines with small, concentrated flavors. Harvest should begin in early September with Hardscrabble Sauvignon Blanc.
Subscribe to Linden Updates for the latest vineyard and cellar information.
Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Journal: August 7, 2021