Since Frank Family’s earliest vintages, our interest in wine has grown from a passion into a business. We produced just 200 cases in our first year and now produce nearly 150,000 cases a year. While our production has increased, our ongoing winemaking vision to improve quality and consistency year after year has remained unchanged. Our team is always looking for new winemaking technologies and methods to see this vision through, most recently making a sizable investment in a new state-of-the-art automated bottling line.
Installed at the winery in February 2021, before our bottling season began, the new line is a result of a collaboration with Maspack Packaging and MBF North America. Both companies are based in Italy and are leading the way for wine and spirits technological solutions. Working hand-in- hand with the manufacturers, Frank Family’s new bottling line is custom-designed to suit our exact winemaking needs. This one-of-a-kind line, known as the, “Superbloc”, truly surpasses the performance of any other modern-day winemaking equipment.
It is an integrated line that passes the bottles seamlessly from one system to the next with precision only automation can offer. Bottling, capping, corking, labeling, and packaging can be done robotically, minimizing human error. The Superbloc is equipped with cameras and sensors to detect any bottle that doesn’t meet our standards for fill level or is corked, waxed, and labeled less than perfectly and will reject it from the line.
The most amazing part is this quality control does not come at a cost for time. We can now bottle with greater speed while increasing accuracy, employee safety, and overall wine quality. Vicente Llamas, Bottling Line Supervisor said “the Superbloc offers us the ability to safely surpass our previous line’s production capacity, without compromising the quality of our wines. As the next vintages come, we expect to be even more efficient and increase our quality accordingly.”
While the first year with our bottling line involved a steep learning curve with adjustments that required patience and training, our winemaking team continues to amaze us by transcending their own capabilities with every vintage. We are excited for the possibilities our new bottling line brings and for the remarkable wines it will continue to handle with care before sending them out into the world.
