Forget food trucks - take a look at this wine truck!
Windsor Morning's Jonathan Pinto climbs aboard the mobile bottling plant at Cooper's Hawk Vineyards in Harrow
Cooper's Hawk Vineyards is a craft winery in Harrow, Ont., close to Lake Erie. Every year, they produce 5,000 cases of wine — or about 60,000 bottles. While that may sound like a lot, the operation is still considered quite small.
When it comes to bottling that wine, it wouldn't make sense for Cooper's Hawk to own their own bottling line. So they turn to the next best thing: a bottling line on wheels. Visiting the winery a few times a year, the entire operation fits inside a narrow truck trailer. On a good day, the staff at Cooper's Hawk can bottle 1,000 cases of wine — or about 12,000 bottles.
Click on the video to see the bottling line in action.
When the bottling truck arrives at the winery, it's all hands on deck. When I paid a visit there this week, one of the people busy packing bottles was Tom O'Brien, the president and founder of Cooper's Hawk.
I managed to pull him off the line for a few minutes to tell me what was going on. Click on the audio player to hear our conversation.
Want to purchase some Cooper's Hawk wine?
Only 20 per cent of what Cooper's Hawk produces ends up on the shelves of LCBO stores. The rest of it is sold at the winery itself, or at the restaurants they do business with directly.
Cooper's Hawk is located at 1425 Iler Rd. in Harrow, a community of Essex. They recently opened a full-service restaurant on-site called The Vines.