Due to the COVID saga since early 2020, wine producers have been unable to visit Japan for face-to-face wine tastings. Even travel within has been impacted, making mere tastings difficult. The connections between winemakers and wine consumers were disrupted, meanwhile the new vintages kept coming as winemaking is seen as essential work in wine producing countries. To create opportunities to re-connect the wines and consumers we decided to go remote, necessitating a rebottling service. We call it the Copito Project.Maintaining the qualityTransferring wine into small bottles for delivery is not only a new initiative for our company. For example, it has been used for remote classes at wine schools especially since Covid. The difficulty with rebottling is ensuring the transferred wine retains all the characteristics of the original wine until it’s ready to be drunk, and this became the project’s first challenge.The most common cause of wine deterioration when transferring wine is oxidation. When wine is initially bottled at the winery, the dissolved oxygen in the wine is carefully controlled, air in the bottle is removed on the bottling line and the bottle topped with up inert nitrogen gas. The first time the wine mixes with oxygen from outside the bottle is when the bottle is opened and poured into a glass. If you want to transfer it to another bottle before it is finally poured for drinking, oxidation and deterioration are inevitable unless you are very creative.First up, we tried transferring the wine in an argon-filled tank. Argon, an inert gas which has been available in Japan for food use since 2019 (due our advocacy work, although we did not have re-bottling in our mind at the time), is the best choice to prevent oxidation in an open environment as it is heavier than air. By pouring wine from a full bottle into a small bottle in a large tank filled with argon gas, wine can be transferred without being mix ed with oxygen. However, this method is not perfect. During the process, the wine in the bottle is tilted back and forth several times. On occasion, the rim of a hand-held bottle may come out of the argon gas layer. In addition, pouring wine by hand into the narrow bottle opening is easier said than done, and spillage was unavoidable.Introducing a filling machineIn June 2021, when our annual open cellar was cancelled for the second year in a row, we decided to introduce our carefully aged wines in small bottles as an alternative, which led us to install a filling machine to avoid the risks involved with transferring aged wines into small bottles by hand.We purchased a peristaltic pump, a gentle and easy-to-clean pump widely used in the medical and food production settings. We placed the intake and outlet so wine could be transferred without moving the full bottle, and the small bottles were filled from the bottom avoiding agitation. The full and small bottles are all under argon, which eliminates the risk of oxidation and by mechanizing the process, we also greatly reduced spillage, improving re-bottling efficiency.Rebottling small bottles of wineSince the introduction of the filling machine and obtaining a production license in June 2021, we’ve sold several small bottle sets with themes such as “Aged Wine Set,” “Blind Tasting Set,” and “Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon Vertical Tasting Set.” There are occasions where you need multiple wines of small quantities like food pairing course menu or studying to be a sommelier, but necessities aside, it’s just fun to compare several wines at the same time. Wine characteristics embodies many factors such as the grape variety and region, differences in production methods, and climatic conditions of each vintage. By providing wines in small formats, we hope to provide opportunities for people to experience more wines and experience them from a range of perspectives while removing hurdles like location and time. We continue to invest in Copito Project to allow more people to enjoy varieties of wine of quality.Anri Nakamura CohenPlanning & Strategy Manager, “The Engineer”, Village Cellars Ltd.Small bottle service now availableDo you have your own ideas for small bottle sets but are not sure how to go about it?We offer re-bottling service at our temperature-controlled cellar in Himi. Please contact our sales representative or our Toyama head office for more information.FeaturesTemperature controlled cellarArgon gasMechanised transfer Services IncludeBottles, labels, packaging providedDirect shipping serviceWines not in our inventory* In some circumstances we may have to decline.See videos of pumps in action from our previous projects.%3Ciframe%20width%3D%221280%22%20height%3D%22731%22%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FrLpcN4QEbTo%22%20title%3D%22YouTube%20video%20player%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B%20autoplay%3B%20clipboard-write%3B%20encrypted-media%3B%20gyroscope%3B%20picture-in-picture%22%20allowfullscreen%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E