2004 Butterdragon bottled

Well, we’ve now done it 3 times…
Yesterday we bottled 650 cases of the 2004 Butterdragon Hill. That’s 630 12 pack cases + the rest in equivalent of mags and 375’s. The bottling went well. The wine was trucked over to Frank Family from Rombauer on Monday, underwent a light filtration, and the line was set up and ran quickly on Wednesday.
As those of you who had the chance to taste it out of the barrel know, the 04 is great. We are very excited about this vintage. Although we like both 02 and 03, the additional maturity of the vines makes us suspect that the 04 will be our “out-of-the-ballpark” wine.
The 2004 Butterdragon will be released next Spring. We’ve decided to keep the 2004 Baconbrook in the barrel longer so it won’t be bottled until next January. That wine will be released in the Fall of 2007.