When we decide that our wines are ready, at least to move from a bigger vessel to a smaller one, we start bottling. This is one of the last steps in the very long and complex process from vine plant to wine glass. Somehow, it’s also the beginning of a new life for the wine.
The first few vintages, before we built our amazing new winery, we did not have our own bottling line and thus, had to rely on an external bottling line. Basically a truck with the entire equipment on. It was doable, but a far cry from the sophisticated bottling line we have now in our new winery and have bottled our babies with these past 4 years.
The machine we have, is one of the most advanced on the market and it allows us to keep our oxygen-free circuit by first filling the pre-sterilised bottles with argon and then after filling them with wine filling the gap between the wine and the cork with argon.
We focus on allowing as little as possible of oxygen touching our wines in general, especially for the whites and roses, so it’s a huge plus for us to be able to bottle with argon. Eliminating the oxygen in first the bottle and then the bottle neck keeps our wines ultra fresh for a longer period of time.
Once bottled, the wine keeps maturing. The natural corks contain a certain amount of oxygen that’s slowly released into the wine. It also releases natural flavour compounds that interact with the wine ever so delicately. Both add to the development and shape of the wine and make it smoother and more complex. However, this is only something we want for certain of our wines, in general only the reds.
In recent years started using different corks for our wines. Based on tastings of the first vintages where we bottled a smaller number of bottles with different corks in the sake of experiment, besides natural corks, we today work with both Diam5 and Diam10, that are both TCA free guaranteed conglomerate corks. The number relates to the amount of oxygen contained in the cork. Controlling the amount of oxygen allows us to preserve the aromatic profile of our wines and the desired ageing time.
The more oxygen the more/faster ageing!
For our whites and roses we focus on the immediate fruit and freshness and thus, use Diam corks, whereas for our reds we want a bit more of evolution in the bottle, which require more oxygen and thus, we use natural corks.
The evolution that takes place in a bottle closed with a natural cork is a process that takes time, hence us keeping some wines back at the cellar after bottling in order for them to reach our club members at the perfect time.
We always use the best quality natural cork as the cork and wine form a symbiosis. It's also important to us to protect Mother Earth, and knowing that each natural cork stopper is capable of retaining up to 112 grams of CO2 makes us sleep better at night.
We use different bottle shapes for different wines to hint at our stylistic ideas and goals for each wine. For example, our Chardonnay based white called Galatzo and our pure Pinot Noir, Randa, are bottled in Burgundy shaped bottles to hint at the style we aim for. All our wines except for our rosés are bottled in green glass bottles as that protect best against light damaging the wine. However the color of the rosé wines is so pretty it’s a pity to hide it so they are bottled in clear bottles.
