Most winemakers stress over the timing of when to harvest, how to ferment, and even what their barrel aging set-up looks like each year. Each decision matters. But there is one stage that holds all the power over when wine will be in customers’ hands, and creates the most scheduling strife. The bottling stage dictates it all.
Release dates are determined, cash flow is affected, retail placements rely on it all and one bottling opportunity can make or break if a season can be captured or sidelined until the next vintage year.
The bottling stage exists in a sweet spot relative to other stages, meaning that all before it is contingent upon attaining the final product in tanks and barrels for months and years before. Yet all after it cannot happen until those same bottles are filled, corked and labeled. This stage has the most power relative to whether production schedules run smoothly or fall apart.
Why Bottling Creates Scheduling Pressure
The bottling stage is the only part of wine production that operates on a stricter timeline. Once the wine is complete, it must have a quick shift through bottling. Otherwise, it lingers in a tank taking space that could be utilized for additional vintages.
It only makes sense to move on with this part of the process since the staggered years essentially keep all stocks separated. Otherwise, pushing back the bottling stage means pushing back the release date of any given vintage. Lengthy delays can result in losing out on holiday seasons, wedding seasons, high tourism seasons and more.
Equipment capacity plays a large role in this happening quickly. A winery making 5,000 cases per year but using bottling equipment intended for 500 cases has a mathematical problem at hand. The runs take longer to fill and seal, there is more set-up time and the lines become intermingled with other production needs.
There are many cases where a winery will find that investing in a high-quality wine bottling machine will help transform a production timeline from an accommodating scheme to a scheduled one where releases can be built around market needs.
Manual systems and semi-automated systems enhance this challenge even more. They necessitate more coordination of labor as they take longer per case and offer less flexibility for changes on a dime when timelines shift unexpectedly. When a retailer needs 200 cases for a flash sale or when a distributor negotiates an earlier cutoff date, it is the bottling capacity that allows for victory or defeat.
How Bottling Speed Impacts Upstream Decisions
What people fail to realize is that how much one can bottle impacts decisions made long before the grapes are harvested. For example, winemakers plan fermentation and movement schedules based partially on how/when/where they can bottle. If capacity will be low, they scale back production accordingly.
A winery with functional bottling equipment can afford to be gutsy with production numbers. They can fulfill wholesale orders confidently, take on private labeling opportunities or even special releases without worrying if they will have enough time physically to bottle if the next harvest comes their way. The equipment creates time.
Further, this works downstream throughout the entire operation. Tank space requirements pivot on how much can be bottled in a given day/week/month/season. If wine is sitting in tanks waiting to be bottled, its tank cannot be cleaned and prepared to welcome the new batch coming in from barrels. For example, during grape harvest there needs to be somewhere for the new vintages to go.
The Release Calendar Conundrum
Imagine a scenario to illustrate this point: A winery wants to release X new vintage for spring releases (think early March for wine club shipments). In order to achieve this goal with a timeline in mind, one must work backward for practical application.
Assume they need time for labeling and packaging (late February) and then time for settling from bottling (January) but now we also have the late-harvest wine from last year still needing to be bottled this month as well as the reserve program having requested bottles that need extended aging.
If bottling capacity is stunted, schedules collide. The winery either pushes back the spring release (disappointing customers), hurries through the process (growing concern over quality) or brings in a mobile unit on short notice at a premium for expedited rates because at the end of the day, no one wants to let down their loyal customers.
Faster, more reliable systems make this situation smoother as they cut down on actual time needed during bottling. If one could get everyone through in two weeks with X setup but only takes three days with Y setup due to convenience and efficiency, even larger accessibility choices emerge that benefit release timing with respect to those who need custom labels.
The Cost of Bottling Delays
Any day a finished product sits in a tank waiting to get bottled is essentially money lost as working capital. It cannot sell from that point onward and it cannot ship. It is incurring no revenue but still needs tank space and climate control which for small to mid-sized wineries with modest margins, impacts cash flow immediately.
For quality control reasons, this component often goes neglected but needs attention: when something is ready for bottling, it’s ready for its intended style; sitting together in a tank longer (especially if extended time was not anticipated) creates oxidation potential or forces additional sulfite additions or even off flavors for subjective reasons or miniscule deviations in tannin developments.
Wineries without efficient equipment that’s reliable find themselves with unanticipated challenges when time doesn’t mean anything.
Retail buyers and distribution reliance also depend on timely guarantees; if buyers plan their orders according to one truck’s worth of promise but fail to deliver even once (not even including multiple times), credibility suffers and shelves are then reserved for those who can keep promises.
Equipment That Matches Ambition
A positive bottling setup matches ambitions of growth; if there’s a winery making 2,000 cases per year but operating under the assumption that they’ll grow to 5,000 cases within three years, they need equipment that works with their current volume but has the horsepower necessary for expansion.
Under-equipping means replacing equipment sooner than anticipated whereas over-equipping ties up capital for something that’s only partially utilized.
Modern bottling machinery boasts more than speed; reliability is necessary, inclusion that offers quality means every bottle filled correctly, even level; every cork constructed properly; every seal adjusted efficiently reduces variables in play based on errors outside of operator’s control.
Wine loss from filling also impacts revenue; cut it down, or even better, avoided completely, through efficiency of top-notch machinery mean thousands of dollars added into the bank.
Sanitation options also play well; poorly cleanable options create mold concerns or risk contamination or take more time between runs than effective setups are generally intended to.
Making It Work with Scheduling
Winemakers who get bottling under control are ones who win out with scheduling conflicts, they can produce new stock based on seasonal release demands without worrying about how they’ve scheduled their equipment; they can fulfill wholesale amounts with confidence; they can conduct their customizations because money is made above board.
Making equipment responsible transforms scheduling considerations into facilitating growth instead of chaos.
This ultimately relieves stress from staff needing to work together for days on end during uncontrolled bottling marathons; instead, everyone can spare their work and tension melts away without things grinding to a halt because proper machinery knows what it’s capable of handling.
The bottling stage may not seem as sexy as harvesting or as celebrated as aging but where it takes off and where production time links with reality is where all intentions meet final expectations against market demands and where the schedule holds true, or falls apart before eyes and ears of everyone involved. Getting this stage right, and equipping it, with what it needs to handle volume means everything for how the rest of the winery operates.