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closeLike many of his fellow winemakers who were just setting out in Paso Robles in the mid-1980s, Neils Udsen of Castoro Cellars started out with a meager budget.
So when it came to facing one of the most expensive investments a winery can make — an in-house bottling line — he started looking for alternatives.
“There were a handful of us winery owners in Paso Robles who were scratching our heads about the best way to bottle our product,” Udsen recalls.
“So I called Wild Horse, Justin, Creston, Adelaida and Eberle, and said, ‘Hey, if I put this mobile line together, would you use it?’”
They all said “yes,” so that was the start of the Castoro Bottling Company in 1988.
Before he knew it, the line was booked 10 hours a day, six days a week.
He then purchased a second truck, and then a third. Today Udsen has five mobile bottling trucks that service wineries from Santa Barbara to Monterey.
The mobile bottling industry on the Central Coast reflects what’s happening in the state as a whole.
Only 20 years ago there were fewer than five mobile bottling services in California.
Today there are close to 20. In the Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo area, Udsen’s company was the first; now there are at least five. Steve Rasmussen, former winemaker at Talley Vineyards, is the owner of one of those services.
In 1997, he was unhappy after using five different bottling services at the Arroyo Grande winery.
“The main reason we started was we felt that the bottling lines we were using at the time were not gentle enough on our very fine pinot noirs and chardonnays,” Rasmussen explains.
Rasmussen partnered with his cellar master at the time, Jose Cuevas, and invested $20,000 in 1998 to buy a single truck to primarily service Talley’s needs.
The two took it out on weekends to help make a little extra cash, and before long, “we didn’t have any weekends left.”
Rasmussen named his company SLO Bottling, for its base in the San Luis Obispo area.
But he says before long the name developed a double meaning.
“The idea is we go slow,” Rasmussen says, starting out at only 18 to 20 bottles a minute compared to competitors’ speed of up to 100. “That’s when we named ourselves ‘SLO’ with a chuckle.”
Although they now have equipment that can fill up to 70 bottles a minute, he says they are still slower than most competitors in order to more gently handle the wine.
Both Castoro and SLO Bottling charge for their services in roughly the same way.
There is a standard fee to come in and set up, which includes hooking into the winery’s power supply. Then depending on the number of cases, the speed of filling and any required changeovers, the charge is billed on a per case basis.
That cost can range from $2.00 to $3.75 a case, and most lines can fill and pack up from 2,000 to 4,000 cases a day. The winery provides all packaging materials.
Even with those charges, it’s a relative bargain to the average winery owner.
The cost of an in-house bottling line can range from $30,000 for a very basic hand-operated line, to upwards of $500,000 for a top-of-the-line automated system.
For equipment that may be used just a few weeks a year, and takes up valuable space in a winery, it’s a huge investment.
“Even for wineries making 30,000 cases a year, you have to ask yourself, is it worth more to have winemaking tools that you’re going to use every day, or a bottling line that you use periodically?” Udsen says.
Udsen also warns that bottling lines are maintenance intensive and have a reputation for acquiring “gremlins” when they sit for extended periods of time without use.
Both Castoro and SLO Bottling have equipment that can handle untraditional bottles, screwcap closures and various label requirements.
Both have also been affected three years in a row by low harvests, resulting in much less wine made and eventually bottled in the area.
But they say business is stable, with an estimated 90 percent of all Central Coast wineries depending on mobile bottling services.
With several other bottling services on the Central Coast, including Bottle Meister in San Luis Obispo, the competition is mostly friendly, and they say their differences are a matter of speed, equipment and personal relationships.
“We all end up with a wine bottled, with a label on it, looking good,” Udsen says. “So in the end we all provide the same service.”
Castoro Bottling Company
San Miguel, 467-2002
Owner: Neils Udsen
Online: www.castorobottling.com
SLO Bottling Services
Arroyo Grande, 541-2350
Owner: Steve Rasmussen
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