Bottle Your Heart Out

            For the past few weekends, the husband and I have been attending the Montgomery Distillery Bottling Parties.  What got us hooked you may ask? It was definitely the free bottle of quality vodka or gin and the free pizza for lunch.  No, we are not in college anymore, but when we hear free, it’s on!

So these parties are more like a factory process of putting together hundreds of bottles of gin or vodka.  The process starts with blowing out debris (no, not with your mouth) and then filling the bottles with the selected alcohol for the day.  The filler has an automatic stop so that every bottle has roughly the same amount of alcohol.  The next station includes checking the liquid levels and putting a cork in (see below).  

After that, three different stickers are applied to front, back, and top.  Finally, all the bottles are boxed for orders or to go upstairs to the tasting room.

There's the hubby...corkin'

And that's me on the left and one of my classic faces!

Now we originally started attending these soirees to get a free bottle of alcohol (each), but it has become something that both my husband and I enjoy doing together.  Since neither of us grew up in Missoula, it’s also a great way to meet other community members and especially people our age.  Basically, it’s our way of being social at least once a week.  Yes, we both have friends, but it can be quite difficult to make new friends when the old ones move away; even more so if you aren’t attending college or are a part of another group (taekwondo, yoga, etc.).

                At the end of the day, we are proud of our participation in a usually private affair. We have now bottled batch number 26,27 and 29 of Montgomery’s “Quicksilver” Vodka along with batches 21 and 24 of the “Whyte Laydie” Gin.  So there it is: something new and exciting that most people haven’t experienced. 

What have you done that few others have tried?