There's many a slip between cup and lip; or in the case of winemaking  between grape and sip, and the one step where Murphy is most active is at bottling. To the uninitiated, what could seem simpler than filling a bottle with wine, twisting a screwcap on to the appropriate orifice, slapping on a pre-glued label and stacking the completed bottle in a pre-printed carton. It all seems a bit boring and repetitive really.
So what could go wrong. Well, in reality, almost everything. The wine may be too cool for its own good; (labels don't like sticking to bottles which have condensation developing on them), there could be too much CO2 or O2 trapped into the wine being bottled: (leading to either a spritzy Shiraz, or worse, an oxidized wine in bottle), the wine may present problems at the final polishing filtration; ( which in the case of Bloodwood is always sterile) the bottles, labels, caps and cartons may not quite match: or arrive on time, (this NEVER happens at Bloodwood), the weather may change on the day; (this upsets most of the parameters above, particularly as we bottle in a semi-open area of the winery) or something as simple as a forklift driver misbehaving on the day could result in partial demolition of valuable winery and bottling infrustructure.
When we bottle at Bloodwood, we usually attempt at least six wines in a session, so the combinations and permutations for possible aggravation are potentially immense. So we need an understanding, professional and entirely competent team to successfully complete the exercise. In Des and Jean from Vintage bottling, we have found the impossible. Now, if I could only convince them to support the NSW Waratahs, then we'd all be happy!