When I get up to the vineyard I walk down to see the crew at work. I just can't believe how quickly they are able to work. At first they hold one of the five gallon buckets with one hand and let the fruit drop in as they cut it off from the vine. When the bucket gets too heavy to hold they cut the clusters while holding them with the opposite hand. When the two buckets are full they run to the bins at the end of the row, dump the buckets and get their ticket punched. Each bucket weighs 20 pounds. And for each bucket they receive $1.60. Some really expert pickers make over $20 an hour. Again, I am totally winded just walking up and down one of the rows. And I am carrying only my camera, not 40 pounds of grapes.In my personal Bible study this morning I was reading about the Old Testament Festival of Booths. This is a week long harvest festival. The participants created temporary dwellings at the place of harvest. The instructions to the people are to: "Rejoice at your festival: you, your son, your daughter, your servant, your maid, the Levite, the foreigner, and the orphans and widows who live in your neighborhood . . . God, your God, has been blessing you in your harvest and in your work, so make a day of it. Really celebrate!" Well, OK, if I have to. These words are from Deuteronomy 16. I love how everyone gets included in the party, even the religious official, which would be me.
I have some time to walk through the vineyards today. We did the sorting for Rennelle's Block before lunch, and then for Tallulah's Run North after we had eaten. And, oh, did we eat. Lisa had a friend of hers, a 70 year old Guatemalan cook named Ruth, create a feast for us. There are chili rellenos with red echillada sauce, chicken tamales with red or green sauce, and a guacamole that was out of this world. Becky added her own home grown salsa. It was a feast. I have been sorting fruit most of my time and my back has been aching from leaning over at about a 12 degree angle for hours at a time. My wife said that I should tense the muscles in my stomach, which would keep my back from hurting. It works. Except that after that huge lunch I just can't do it anymore.
When we are done sorting the fruit from the vineyard we have some time to relax. We are waiting for some fruit to be delivered from another vineyard. But this fruit has been purchased by Shane, the new assistant winemaker at Coeur de Terre, who is making wine for his own label. That's Shane to the left stirring up the de-stemmed fruit. He has added some dry ice to the mix. It makes a blanket of CO2 on top of the grapes which helps to keep them fresh in inhibits the start of fermentation. It is fun to see Shane so excited to begin his own creation. While we were waiting for his fruit to arrive, I head down to the pond. I take a glass of the '09 Estate Pinot Noir. I love it, which is good because this vintage could be similar. Scott and Shane were discussion the lab results of the juice we have so far. Some of the juice is 25 brix. That's a lot of sugar. I ask Scott at lunch what a hypothetical wine maker might do if presented with that much sugar. You have two options he said. You can have a really high final alcohol level, or you can add "Jesus Units". What is that? It's water.I end the day finding the rows of Abby's Block being reflected in the pond. It is peaceful and quiet in the vineyard. It is such a lovely place to just sit and be. I think I might build myself a booth.
