On the Job: Layton’s Chance Winery
One of the beauties of wine is that you take a sniff and a sip of one thing, and in the next few seconds, you can taste and smell dozens of others. Now a lot of time and effort go into creating that perfect glass and this week “On the Job” 47 ABC heads to Layton’s Chance winery to help with that process.
Once you arrive at Layton’s Chance Winery, you’re surrounded by endless miles of grapevines. Walking into their small shop, provides for a delicious smell of different wines. William Layton is the owner of Layton’s Chance Winery and wine bottling day is something he truly looks forward to because it is the last step in his whole 6 month process.
Layton tells 47 ABC, Wine is something you have to have a lot of patience for and I’m really happy when I get them all through it, yeah it’s an exciting day.”
First, Layton took us into the room where all the wine is made. Even though it’s a process that takes 6 months where it has to sit in very large tanks, it takes a lot less time to actually make. Layton tells 47 ABC, “It only takes me 3 weeks to actually make wine, ferment it and have alcohol in it, the whole rest of the time is clearing it, letting the yeast and everything else that was in there settle out, stabilizing it and getting it ready for the bottling.”
Over the course of the process, Layton says he has to move the wine around in the tanks 8 times because of the yeast that naturally falls to the bottom. Layton tells 47 ABC, “Wine is always changing, it’s living organisms that turn it into wine, but yeast aren’t the only thing that can be in there, there can be bad yeast. There’s bad yeast that can get flavors you don’t want, there can be bacteria that turns into vinegar. I have to taste it about every week.”
After understanding where the wine actually came from, it was time to go see where the bottling process is done. Stationed right outside the winery was a large tractor trailer and Layton tells 47 ABC, “It’s an amazing process they have everything you need right on the truck here. It’s moving so fast it takes us about ten people to keep up with all of that.”
Once inside the trailer, glass wine bottles are put onto an assembly line where they are flipped upsidown and cleaned, filled with nitrogen gas, then the wine goes in and it gets capped and labeled. Not to mention, it’s a really small space!
But the first step is getting the wine bottles out of the boxes and onto the assembly line. This was no easy task, but the key was to go fast! Next, it was time to pack the boxes. As soon as your boxes are filled, you push it through a tiny machine that automatically tapes the box.
Next, on to the labeling which wasn’t too difficult, but the boxes are heavy! As soon as you receive a full, taped box, you have to put a label and the date it was packed right on top. And after about twenty minutes and countless boxes, the job was done!
Next week 47 ABC heads to the Salisbury Dance Academy, where Michelle will be training with ballerinas for the Eastern Shore Ballet Theatres upcoming play “Snow White”.
