When you’re a small winery, as we are small on capital and big on hopes and dreams, well some times one has to get a little more creative to fit into the big world of the wine industry. In the big world, some things are well, just bigger. Stacks of bottles come on pallets 6 feet tall, forklifts are regularly employed to move things around. A semi is a regular occurrence on the supplier meets manufacturer seen. But when you’re small like us, you can’t afford $700 delivery charges for 150 empty cases of wine bottles. (That would add 55% on to the price of EACH bottle!) You don’t have a delivery bay hooked up to your garage and you sure can’t accommodate a forklift in your daily operations. Suffice it to say, a lot of bicep power goes into getting what you need done. I dream for the day I get me a forklift. I will name her sweat equity.
So our weekend this week included borrowing our gracious friend’s truck to move what became an 11 foot affair, and that’s after the Dodge Ram’s suspension sunk 2 feet when loaded. Let’s just say a 36 minute trip down the highway, turned into 1 hour and 49 minutes on the back roads to Sammamish, cause well we weren’t sure about the tensile strength of the saran wrap holding the pallet of 72 cases of bottles together. Lots of torque goes into every turn and bump in the road.
This picture doesn’t even begin to capture the monster that became the bottle pickup day. Even the supplier’s manufacturers stared in awe as we loaded this baby up.
Not only was the truck packed to the brim, the Jeep got it’s fair share of the affair with at least 40 cases in its belly and loaded with a forklift I might add.
We finally made it our destination and at least we can say not a bottle was broken during the event!
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