I'm down in the barrel room this morning. Scott has lined out a pretty simple job for me. Take the hand truck and move all of the empty barrels out to the large room, and move the full wine barrels down the the other end of the barrel room. And I can do it. I manage to move all of the empty barrels without a mishap. Roberto catches me making some mistakes and shows me the right way to lay them out. I'm fine until I start thinking. "I'm moving a lot of money." Each barrel when new costs somewhere around $1,200. They each hold about 60 gallons of wine, or enough to make 25 cases. The last two barrels I move are the Founder's Club Pinot Noir. I know that these cost $50 a bottle, so counting the barrels, I'm moving over $32,000! I start to get paranoid about dumping the whole thing over.
After (successfully) moving the barrels I get to clean out a six foot tall by six foot in diameter wood barrel fermenter. Scott has given me instructions on how to clean it. There are two solutions to use with hot water rinses after each one. The only thing he hasn't told me is how to get in. I want to drop down from the top. But you actually go in through the "man door". I'm wondering if my bulk will fit. But Scott assures me I will. Id, but just barely. I also get to try out my new waterproof overalls. They work great.
Lisa comes downstairs and finds me sweeping out the cellar room where I have just taken out all of the barrels. She tells me a story of a well knows person who was in the wine trade and then decided he wanted to make his own wine. After a few years he called it quits. He just didn't realize the making wine is 80% custodial work. You clean the cellar, you clean the equipment, you clean it again. You clean your barrels, you clean your fermenters, you clean the bins to hold the grapes, you clean the crush pad, you clean . . . well you get the idea. And then when you're done inside you go out and clean up the vineyard. I'm getting closer to being a winemaker because I have the custodian thing down.
The grapes are partially juiced when the come out of the destemmer. Scott applies a small amount of sulphur to keep down bacteria, and a bit of dry ice to create a blanket of CO2 over the top. He doesn't want the juice to start fermenting yet. He'll add yeast later to get the process going. Some winemakers don't add yeast at all. They just let nature take it's course. I think Scott likes to have a little more control over the process than that. Scott and Roberto are consolidating two of the fermenting bins in the photo to the left. The bins are then placed in the barrel room where they will be kept at a constant temperature.
In the afternoon we get to do our first crush. Crush is kind of a misnomer, especially with red grapes. We will not be crushing any grapes today. They are de-stemmed and left to soak in a fermenting tub. Our grapes arrived from another local vineyard from which Scott has purchased grapes to make his Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. As the bins arrive Scott looks them over, grabs a few and pops them in his mouth. Roberto is the fork lift master of the operation. He pick up the bin with a special attachment that allows him to tilt the it to one side so the grapes can flow out. I have two jobs. One is the set a bar over the bin so that lid doesn't slide off when it's tipped, and the other is . . . clean the bin out with water after it is emptied.
In the photo to the right you can see Roberto (in Red) using a tool to move the grape clusters around on the sorting table. Mauricio (on the left) and Martin (on the right) are sorting the grapes. They are removing any non grape materials like leaves, and also looking for any botrytis clusters. Botrytis is a mold that desiccates the grapes. The table that they are standing next to vibrates, and is slopped slightly away from Roberto. At the other end is a shoot where the grape clusters fall into the destemmer. This amazing machine gently removes the stems from the grapes. The grapes continue down into the the fermenting tub and the stems all come out of the side of the machine.
The grapes are partially juiced when the come out of the destemmer. Scott applies a small amount of sulphur to keep down bacteria, and a bit of dry ice to create a blanket of CO2 over the top. He doesn't want the juice to start fermenting yet. He'll add yeast later to get the process going. Some winemakers don't add yeast at all. They just let nature take it's course. I think Scott likes to have a little more control over the process than that. Scott and Roberto are consolidating two of the fermenting bins in the photo to the left. The bins are then placed in the barrel room where they will be kept at a constant temperature.At the end of the day I'm cleaning up around the large barrel fermenters where I'd been working earlier. As I'm putting away the hoses I see something move. It's our friend. We heard him croaking when we were bottling, but we could never find him. I open the large door next to the fermenter and let him out. Roberto is transferring some wine from a large stainless steel
container into some carboys, so I go into the winery, grab a glass, go out and stick it under the stream, and . . . instant glass of wine. I take it upstairs to the deck just off of the tasting room, sit in one of the Coeur de Terre Adirondack chairs, and watch the sun go down. What a great blessing it is to have time to sit and enjoy and glass of wine and just look over the vineyard as the light starts to fade. When I'm done I pack up my things, get in the car and head down the drive to the front gate. For the first time since I've been working here I'm the last one to leave. Luckily the closed gate wasn't too difficult to figure out. On the other hand being trapped in a vineyard doesn't sound too bad at all.