Cold Glue, Hot Wires
Sometimes winemakers have to deal with cold glue and “hot” wires.
The hazards of winemaking production are many.
We recently borrowed an old foil spinner, which was botching the pristine ivory capsules for our 2021 SANNA Sauvignon Blanc, and this got Kristof in a reflective mood. “One of the biggest parts of my job as a winemaker is fixing broken machines,” he said, as he rapidly took apart the tool and adjusted the three industrial rubber bands inside, then added some 820 silicone food grade lube.
Turning it back on he said, “Stand back. Never do what I’m doing. Never use a piece of machinery with the safety shield off.” He inserted a wine bottle with a new capsule into the spinner with consistent pressure, again and again, until he got a satin smooth texture with no wrinkles. “Fixed,” he said, replacing the safety shield.
“Of course, this is how we used to do everything,” he said. “Basically, by hand. The bottling, the corks, the foils. The volunteer crew at Saddleback Cellars was mad at me the first time I hired a nearly automatic mobile bottling truck, until they found out it was way easier and a lot more fun.”
“We still used cold glue labels back then, before the pressure sensitive ones (also known as stickers) were available. It looked like white Elmer’s school glue, and the machine would constantly get gummed up. The truck was full of buckets of water, where we’d soak the bad labels off.”
“Fixing machines could have killed me a few times,” he said. “One of those first mobile bottling trucks overheated and lost power on a rainy day. You can’t cancel and reschedule. That costs the company $20K. What are you going to do? You’re going to fix the machine. So I hot-wired it.”
“I knew about wiring from my grandfather Marvin, the electrician, because he had me helping him with jobs since I was ten years old, but I’d never fully appreciated the difference between 120v, 240v, & 480 volts. I now know to never ever mess with 480 volts, but back then I did. And got away with it. Unscathed…on a rainy day…”
We agreed that life was less regulated back then, for better or worse. This reminded him of another story, the time a winery lost power, and 4” thick pieces of ice began melting & falling off 60.000 gallon tanks of wine, severing power cords & glycol pipes. One of the falling chunks of ice knocked him unconscious, and he woke up in a pool of freezing water and arcing electrical wires.
“We just dusted ourselves off back then and got back to work,” he said.
Cheers!—Kristof & Jennifer
