What do you do if you are a small, family-owned winery and don’t have the room or don’t want to invest in a bottling line? You could hire a mobile bottling truck. During a recent visit to Jeff Runquist Wines, the mobile bottling truck happened to be there and I got to take a look inside.

The process was fascinating and mind bogglingly fast! Click play on the video to see just how fast.

How the Line Worked in this Mobile Bottling Truck

• The boxes of bottles are emptied on a table.
• The bottles are put in the sparger which turns the bottles upside down and injects them with nitrogen. This removes all the air from the bottle so that the wine is not exposed to oxygen.

• They quickly move to the filler.
• From there, a cork is inserted.
• Foil caps are put on by two young ladies – the only thing on the line that wasn’t automated.

• The bottles are lifted into a machine with plastic rollers that form the foil cap to the bottle.
• The bottles roll through the labeler and, voilà, they head on out to be boxed back up and stored or shipped.

Bottles rolling through the labeler

Finished bottles heading out to be boxed up

Bottles are removed from their boxes on the right and put into the sparger

Bottles come out on the left and are boxed for storage or shipping

Have you seen a bottling line in action? At Jeff Runquist Wines, they bottle about every 60 days. Can you imagine doing all that bottling by hand? Some wineries do still bottle by hand or at least with a much less automated method!

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Until next time…