Introduction:
While market-ready bottled wines were exhibited at the very first Breede River Valley Wine Show, Mr. Pietman Hugo, first chairman of BBK's board, noticed some shortcomings. The unfinished look and overall impression negatively impacted on the content. Bottling and presenting good quality wine in this manner made absolutely no sense to Mr. Hugo and the idea of a cooperative bottling plant in the Breede River area was born.

With cellar managers in Worcester and Robertson coming aboard in 1974 plans for the bottling plant were galvanized and the search for a suitable property started. The four erfs BBK still occupies in High Street were earmarked for the development.

The technical committee recommended using only the best equipment and Seitz machines were installed in 1977. The first wine was bottled in the same year, a Hanepoot from Botha Wine Cellar. During the first year of operation BBK bottled 1 800 000 bottles of wine.

Timeline:

• August 1981 – a second bottling line was installed to meet growing demand.
• June 1988 – BBK started bottling sparkling wine, making us one of the few bottling plants handling sparkling wine.
• August 1990 – BBK’s third bottling line was installed.
• June 1995 – after sanctions were lifted in 1994, international exports increased dramatically and a fourth bottling line was installed.
• March 1998 – with the demand for sparkling wine increasing the original bottling line was replaced with a MBF machine.
• November 1999 – BBK started to phase in self adhesive labeling.
• June 2000 – we rose to the challenge and decided to put quality systems in place in order to be audited by the SABS for our ISO 9001:2000 accreditation.
• September 2002 – we received our BRC accreditation.
• July 2006 – BBK’s laboratory received it’s SANAS 17025 accreditation, shortly hereafter our laboratory became one of only two doing analysis for SAWIS.
• July 2008 - the second bottling line was replaced by a Bertolaso machine.
• November 2011 – we performed our first trial run filling 1 000 PET bottles.
• July 2015 – a fith line, the Superblock consisting of various components and the first of it’s kind in South Africa, was installed. During the same time BBK also installed a second pouch-in-box line.
• December 2013 – the decision was made to install a Crown Cork machine to enable BBK to bottle flavoured wine and grape juice.