Clos Du Bois
Our first stop was Clos Du Bois. We arrived in the morning and Miguel Lopez gave us a tour of the winery, Jessica Padron also followed us around the facility.
Wine tasking center for visitors:
Clos Du Bois one and only running line.
Facility is only so big, orders pretty much produce then get shipped out, there is very little storage space by production line.
Shipping doc, I was surprised how small of a space CDB is working with for production and shipping. They only had one shipping doc.
New metrics for continuous improvement. CDB is the only facility currently using the new metric tools to this advanced status. They even have a TV monitor up to show employees or anyone coming in how productive the line is for that current day. These process improvements are supposed to be put in place for all the other warehouses soon.
Beautiful view from shipping doc:
The facilities were so clean. Jessica said even others coming in from different wineries (not all constellation owned) speak to how clean the facility is.
Oak Barrel room:
Testing the barrels:
Room where line 2 used to be, until they brought it over to Woodbridge. This line is now going to produce Meiomi. I was amazed on how much space is there that is not being used currently when they are working with such a small space on the other side of the building.
Robert Mondavi
To Kalon is currently the area of Napa with the highest quality grade of grapes. Robert Mondavi owns the majority of land/grapes in that area. Here we meet with Chris Hartless and Sirirat (Bo) Martin to talk about the Free Flow process. It was nice to talk with both of them about the Free Flow process because Bo has been involved in the process since we acquired Free Flow and Chris has a lot of knowledge in Free Flow samples. After we met Chris and Bo gave us a tour of RMW.
To Kalon vineyard:
Inside Robert Mondavi:
Large oak barrels were made in France.
Grape crusher:
Barrel room:
The large oak barrels from the above photos have lines that run down into this barrel room, to fill the small barrels.
Production line:
Chart out lining the glass production that goes into making the glass bottles:
This exhibit showing how corks are made:
Biagi Bro's warehouse
Neil showed us around the warehouse at our products and other companies kegs. The Biagi warehouse was only a 10 minute drive from Free Flow.
Free Flow Wines
We had a meeting with Ted, Patrick, Michelle, and Georgia. They showed us how orders are processed on their side. After Patrick showed us the production line.
Kegging line:
I was surprised how small it was. The old keg goes in gets cleaned, then filled and comes back out. The kegs actually get filled upside down.
Only storage tanks they have on site:
Storage of empty kegs:
Old keg line, this is actually how they used to fill each keg. This is now the way they decant each keg also.
After a long day we had some In and Out Burger. Great way to end the long day of touring.
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