Christopher Creek Winery

Last weekend I decided to visit Christopher Creek Winery to pick up my wine club wines.  I just so happened to be the same weekend they where doing some bottling.  Since they are a smaller winery, they rent the bottling facility and the facility is a semi-truck with a couple of trailers.  One being the pump and the other being the bottling machine.  There is a crew of about 5 or 6 running the whole operation and since I always carry my camera, I decided to try and get a few pictures.  (Also they have opened up more of the grounds and I was able to get a few pictures from around the winery.)

First let's start with some pictures of the area.  This is the 'new' pool area that was just opened up.

And this is an attempt at doing a panoramic of the valley.  This was shot basically under the umbrella from the above picture.

They also had some live music playing this day and the drummer had a visitor.  He stayed even while he played.


Here are the two pictures I took of the winery itself, I wanted to get some pictures of the bottler.  (Ok, machines fascinate me.)

To start the empties are loaded in one side of the back of the trailer.  They travel along the back side and then into a rinser type machine.  Here the clean/sterile bottle are, I believe, filled with nitrogen and then emptied by flipping them.


Once it goes through this wheel, which is at the other end of the trailer.  It then goes to the bottle filler and corker.  These are two barrel systems that take the bottle around in two circles.

After that they get their foil top and crimp.  And then on to the labeler.


Once they get the label, it is out the back of the trailer to be boxed up.

Ok lastly, I did have to collect some video of this whole process.  Here are four short videos.  The first is the bottle flipper.

Fill and corking.

Then on to the foil and sealer.

Finally to the labeler.

I would like to thank Christopher Creek and their bottler for allowing me to take these pictures.