As I'm wrapping up my internship at Coeur de Terre it occurs to me that I've never talked to Scott about the design of the winery building itself. I love the building, and have very much enjoyed visiting, and sipping wine in the tasting room upstairs. Now, however, I realize how well laid out the working sections of the building are, and especially how smoothly the works flows. So I ask Scott about it. "Well, of course I based it all on the Fibonacci sequence." And once again, I'm starring at Scott like a cow starring at a new gate. You could say that Scott is a numbers guy.
It turns out I do know the principle. I know it from photography. For example that little guy to the right is sitting in the right hand side of the rectangle that is left over when you form a box of the other part of the frame. In other words, photos don't look good when the subject is dead center. The fact that the bird is looking towards the largest part of the frame is even better. At some level I just know this, my mind kind of sub consciously senses it when I'm framing a photo. It helps though, to think about it consciously from time to time. And Scott does. The tasting room is like that photo. If you look at the building layout, it is the smaller section of a large triangle that is left over from the square of the wine making area. I ask Scott if he based his winery on another that he'd seen. I also want to know how he figured out all of the mechanical systems, and the flow of the work area. It's just not something that you think a lot about when you are enjoying a glass of wine, but when you're in the winery, moving barrels and trying to access hot water to warm up some juice you do think about it. Scott said that he didn't really base his building on any others. "It had to be utilitarian, because we just didn't have very much money when we started." He said. He also shared how pretty much every major piece of machinery was purchased used. All of the large stainless steel fermenting tanks, the destemmer, and the press were all used when Scott got them.
He also said that he learned a lot about what he didn't want by studying other facilities and seeing where they didn't work well. "I wanted two entry points to every room, and I wanted a barrel room that would stay cool naturally."
This may seem like a small detail, but it is not. The barrel room here sits underneath the tasting room, and has concrete walls all around it that are insulated by earthen berms. No cooling required which adds up to major savings on electricity.
Another question I have is how did Scott learn to make wine? I ask him if he did something like I'm doing, just pitching in and helping someone to make wine. He did, but didn't have the abundance of time that I've been afforded. He worked with Scott Shull of Raptor Ridge Winery for a few years, helping him with crush and learning the trade. However, there was a steep learning curve when he started making his own wine. Some of the techniques that he had learned, that worked well in another location did not work at Coeur de Terre. Scott ended up never bottling his first vintage. The fruit at Coeur de Terre specifically, and the McMinnville AVA in general, is more expressive and has more tannins than in some other areas, and it's easy to over extract it. That's what happened to Scott's first harvest. The wine was too tannic which can give it a bitter quality. It's still sitting in a barn somewhere. Needless to say he figured it all out very quickly, and the first vintage that he bottled in 2002 is one of my favorite vintages so far.
I came home early today. I ran out of juice, or rather my camera battery ran down. It lasts for so long that it's easy to forget you have to recharge it. My personal batteries, on the other hand, are well charged. Doing a different form of work has been so wonderful change up from my regular vocation. The whole idea of studying winemaking and applying those lessons to the church has, well, born fruit. I'm excited to share my research with the folks at my church who made it all possible, and then with other churches who may be interested in what I have learned. I have been richly blessed and I want to especially thank Pastor Courtney McHill, my Methodist colleague who's made it possible for me to step away from my pastorate for over four months without a second thought to how things are going at the church. Now, she can start planning for her sabbatical!
