When I Caught A Glimpse of Rita

Let me take a moment to introduce Rita.  
Rita is a project T and I began when we started feeling badly about all the premium napa valley juice we were dumping down the drain at the end of the days when we sampled vineyards.  

To help the winemaker know when to harvest the grapes, we lab people go out to collect random clusters to represent the vineyard.  We bring the clusters back to the winery, count them, weigh them and then squeeze the berries for the juice.

We then test the juice for the sugar and acid content (most important), as well as some nitrogen or potassium levels which help us determine what nutrients we will want to add to help the fermentation.  

Over the sampling season (August - October) we want the sugar in the fruit to rise and the acid to drop, however, if we wait too long, the sugar will rise too much and the acid will drop too far and we will have poor conditions for making wine.  So our job is to find a sweet spot in the middle where we have enough sugar for the yeast to ferment, and enough acid left to keep the wine from becoming flabby.  Along with chemistry numbers and taste, the winemaker decides when the grapes have hit that spot and we harvest them.
 

To get there, we sample each vineyard several times to track the changes, and that leaves us with plenty of juice at the end of the day.
Instead of dumping them, we collected all the juice samples we run for analysis into a glass carboy.  We added some yeast and now we are going to let her ferment and eventually dare each other to drink the results.  

Here is the above process:


 

Rita is a mix between white grapes and red grapes, which really, no one advises.  
We thought she would be a rose, but unfortunately she looks more like watery tomato juice.

Even though she comes from scraps and has been largely neglected by us with all the current harvest turmoil, we continue to have high hopes for her.


You go girl.


-L

It's Your Birthday

It's been a birthday extravaganza the past few days at the winery.  

Well, just two**.  

The boss's birthday and the boss's boss's birthday.  And unfortunately the winery troubadour was nowhere in sight to score the events.

The boss's boss's birthday was first.  Last Friday T and I had the honor of preparing the wine for the pre party.  We opened each of the 30 bottles, removed the wine from the sediment and poured them back into the original bottles.  And of course performed some necessary (and delicious) quality control.

15 bottles were 1996 Chateau Mouton Rothchild:

The Other 15 were the 1994:

A single bottle averages $400, so that was $12,000 in wine (I was trying to think of a metaphor for how much money that is, but it was just depressing).  T preferred the '96 and I the '94, but we'll probably never drink that wine again, so it doesn't really matter.  The "Does wine that is $400/bottle taste 10 times better than a $40 bottle" discussion will be left for another time.

For the boss's birthday today, we brought him a cake on a forklift in the shape of a fancy wine bottle:  

It's 7:30pm and T is still doing dishes.  By the way, seems like 60% of what we do in the lab is clean up after the 40% of work we do.  Time to help him so we can all go home.

Today's Tunes:  Visit down memory lane with Tool.  T and I used to be very different people.  Everyone has their own journey.

Up Next: It's been balls hot in Napa, tomorrow we see what else has melted.

-T & L

**Actually 3!  Happy 12th Birthday to Google.

Harvest Beard Championship Part One

I'm realizing that due to complaints from significant others and "itchiness", the Harvest Beard Championship may come to an end drastically sooner than anticipated.  I am sad to report this news however, I resolve to prevent a let down like this in the future by conducting more strict intern interviews and adding a beard growing clause in the hiring contract.

I don't know how much longer they will last, so I would like to share where the boys are so far in the beard-off:


In one corner is C Bear who stands at 6'1", loves romantic comedies, world war one history novels, prince and cougars.

9/9                                           9/13                                        9/20

In the second corner is T weighing in at sturdy 165 pounds, he's been getting yoked by doing punchdowns twice daily and driving his responsible family car to the golf course to practice his swing.

9/9                                           9/13                                        9/20

They are competing for this deluxe shaving set:

Take your ladies on a date night and ask them for their patience in your endeavor to be crowned Harvest Beard Champion.

Good luck gentlemen.  

Oh Bear, oh RowBear

At morning meeting today T and I decided that RowBear will hence forth be called CareBear.

See what we're talking about?

In sadder news, I need to report on the great crash of 2010.  While transferring some files from my camera to the computer something got bunged up and not only did the files not transfer but they were deleted from the camera.  I mostly lost the Harvest Beard dailies.  

It's been tough to get any work done today with all the tears and mourning.   Also, T and I are particularly sleep deprived and running on fumes.  

We have definitely brought our B games to work.

We barely managed to squeeze out some barrel inoculations, nutrient additions and data entry.  T checked the fermentations we started the past few days, did some punch downs, filled out his time sheet. Blah, blah.

Beard Update:

Grand (cellar) Master J shaved his face, and is therefore out of the Harvest Beard Championship.  The rules are no shaving for as long as you can stand it.  And the prize is yet to be determined (but it will be awesome, promise).  But the boys are dropping like flies (despite all the beard motivation I've been pushing - see 9/17 post).  

Only 2 warriors are left, C. Bear and T.  

My money was on T, until he said his money was on C. Bear.  Ultimately though, it will come down to their significant others.  So really, this should be a Harvest Beard Patience Championship for their ladies.

Ok, new contest.  

Prize: yet to be determined (but it will be more awesome than the Harvest Beard Championship prize, promise).

Today's Tunes: Interpol jam sesh.

Up Next: Everyone is a cartoon!

-L

The Hess Collection

This fruit-less Monday brought a much appreciated reprieve

for the crew and with it, an opportunity to travel.  We packed ourselves into cars and took the show on the road to Hess Collection in Napa.   

Something that I have found unique to the wine industry is that we take trips to visit other wineries.  Every winery I have worked at, and that my friends have worked at, make it a point to take the crew to visit other wineries and see how they do things.  And every winery that I have worked at has received visitors from other wineries.  

We all open our doors to each other and get a behind the scenes look at the competition.  Usually the winemaker takes the time to show us around and gives a very different tour than the tourists get.  We get to see their cellars, laboratories and equipment, we ask questions about their styles and decision making, pick their brains, try their wines gratis, and then take the product home at a discount.  I can't imagine another industry that invites the competition in, gives them exclusive access to the people and facilities and then offers their product at a discount. 

Oh, there is so much to love about what we do.

The winery is located up Mt. Veeder, with beautiful views of the valley and gorgeous grounds:

They have tables behind the wheel and underneath the canopy.  

I want to go to there.

Behind the wooden doors is the entrance to the cellar.

The facilities were very astutely described by Dave (director of wine making at Hess) as reminiscent of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  Expansive, labyrinthine and a little spooky in parts.  Some parts of the building are from the early 1900s and others are bran new, like the art gallery.  I stole some footage of the galley (before I knew it was frowned upon), but was not able to capture my favorite piece: the typewriter on fire.

  

Fortunately a quick google search pulled it up:

Someone else stole a picture so I didn't have to.  

The story behind the typewriter is pretty neat, you can read about here.

The tour was really interesting, and a part of the cellar has several tanks with their own dedicated pump, which means automatic pumpovers!  Which is exciting to anyone who ever has to do a pumpover.  Anyway, dedicated pumps to tanks are quite a luxury.  Our winery of roughly 40 tanks shares like 5 pumps.

There is footage of RowBear next to one of these tanks with built in pumps in the video:

The tour ended like all tours, in the tasting room.  Besides their cool facilities, and kickass art gallery, we really enjoyed the wine.  T and I found the price points surprising for a Napa, Mt. Veeder winery, fancy-smancy winery.  Great values.  RoBear and I both took home a 2009 Small Block Series Viognier ($28).  I want to smell like that wine, all the time.  

T and I also really enjoyed the 2008 Allomi Vineyard Petite Sirah, only $36.  I haven't found too many Petite Sirahs that can stand alone, and this one stands alone deliciously.  Lastly, the 2007 Artezin Dry Creek Zinfandel was impressive.  I tend to like my wines on the Pinot side, but this Zin was right up my alley.

Big ups to Dave at Hess Collection for sharing his time and knowledge.  I look forward to going back and having a picnic by the lily pond.

Today's Tunes: Phoenix.  Yes still.

Up Next: Hope we have another fruit-less day.

-L 

Before you're lost between the notes

Ah, nothing says Harvest Time like working on a Sunday.  

And sticky, fermenting clothes.  Also, sleep deprivation.  Also, poor nutrition and weight loss.  Also, sloppy hygiene.  

Also, beards. . . . 

So, ok, lots of things say Harvest.  But to me, living at the winery is at the top of the list.

Saturday T and I had several barrels and a tank to inoculate.  We had 5 puncheons with red fruit ( Malbec and Merlot), 14 barrels with Sauvignon blanc, and one big effing Sauvingnon blanc tank with 3,000 gallons of juice.

Here is some footage from Saturday:

Then Saturday night, the winery had an event to celebrate the release of something or other, so I spent Saturday night at work with some delicious pizza, wine and this dude:

All things considered, it was a pretty delicious Saturday night.

Woke up this morning, and headed back to work to climb the mountain of paper work that accumulated during the week.  Something they didn't prepare me for in wine making school was how much paper it takes to make wine.  

Weigh tags, crush reports, work orders, purchase orders, receipts, 702s (government reporting), data entry for all the analysis we generate.  Not to mentions the typical office stuff like emails and time sheets, etc.  

I can procrastinate with the best of them, but when it comes to work orders and data entry I like stay on top of it, otherwise things get lost, details are forgotten and someone gets yelled at and/or cries.  

However, the recent long days of bringing in fruit have made it difficult to keep up with all the paper work that seems to breed on my desk.  

It seems when I'm not looking the work orders and post its are getting it on and every time I glance near my computer they have birthed more paper babies.  

I need to have a talk with them about using protection, that, or I need to trick, I mean teach T to use the data base.

Today's Tunes: Silence, except the pitter patter of key strokes.

Up Next: Why it's so awesome that it didn't rain today.

-L

Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong pt. 2

(sigh)

It's finally here, Intern K's last day.  

I was going to talk about what happened in the winery today, but instead I think I will just talk about Kyle and all the sunshine he has brought into our lives.

On September 9th, the first day of harvest, the boys started growing the traditional harvest beard.  It's been 9 days so far and it's been low productivity for beard growing.  

Kyle's beard was in particular need of motivation:

Sad. Beard.

So I posted this on the lab door:

It's a page from National Geographic, and when I wasn't looking, T posted on the other side for my motivation:

Once there is significant progress on the beard and/or herding front, it will be shared.  

But back to Kyle.

He's leaving us to go back to school and because of his high demand from the ladies, the beard will be coming off. Our sentiments are best expressed through song, and once again the winery troubadour was in true form, expressing what we all wish we could.

Today's Tunes: The sultry sounds of Price, courtesy of RowBear.

Up Next: Weekend working.

-T & L

Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong

An important part of wine making is wine tasting.  

Lots and lots and lots of wine tasting.  

We taste wine as often as we can not just because it's delicious but for several reasons.  It's important for the wine making team to know the competition, what are the price points of wines similar to ours? What does the packaging look like? What are the flavor profiles?  What do consumers like?  What are our personal styles, and how are they similar or different?

These were some of the focuses for a tasting at the winery last night.  

The tasting was organized by our Cellar Master J and his lovely wife.

  

Featuring:

Twenty Eight wines from California, France, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa.  

Twelve participants from the wine industry including production (us), vineyard management, accounting/sales and general consumers.

We did five flights of five wines and a 6th flight of three wines.

All wines were tasted blind and rated and at the end the wines were revealed.  

Had to curve the line to get them all in a single shot.

My personal standouts were:

2009 Kelly Flemming, 2009 LMR, 2008 The Barrio, 2008 Westerly Vineyards, 2006 Sancerre Domaine Bernard Fleuriet, 2009 Cornerstone.

Some of the group favorites also included:

2009 Cliff Lede Vineyards, 2008 Lewis Reserve, 2005 George Michel, 2009 Titus, 2008 Wither Hills, 2008 Sencerre Domaine de la Rossignole.

It was a 3.5 hour tasting after a pretty solid 11 hour day at work, which I mention not for your pity but only to excuse my poor tasting notes after about the 17th wine and also to explain why I am not sharing them.  Plus, I find other people's notes pretty boring.  

But I do want to say that South African wines, especially the 2008 The Barrio was a really interesting take on Sauvignon blanc.  It was absolutely nothing like anything I've tasted out of California.  The 4 South African wines we tasted all had a very distinct green pepper/jalapeño quality.  

Seriously, they were like liquid jalapeños.  

Please try some South African SBs, even if you're not a fan of spicy peppers, it's still a neat experience.

The 2006 Fleuriet tasted exactly like Champagne, which maybe made for a slightly less sucessful Sancerre, but I loved it. 

Moving on . . . .

It has come to the attention of the lab that T doesn't even read these posts.  

I need to find proper punishment.

Also,

  We wanted to showcase a typical lunch environment we have with the focus of Kyle's last week.  We don't always talk about what we will miss about Kyle but after next week, I think we will.  

Today's Tunes: Leo's serenade of Kyle will be playing in our heads for a long time to come.

Up Next: Hopefully more serenades and heartfelt emotions. Leo, get your guitar.

-T & L

I want you to know He's not coming back

Oh Holy of Holies.  

It has happened.  

The stars aligned and my phone was fully charged, the internet was activated, I remembered my logins/passwords, the files transfered, nothing crashed or shut down and a video was birthed (and posted!).  Since it is our first effort, it is short and imperfect but we can only go up from here.

I've posted the video on the day that it was taken (last Monday's post -which was posted on Tuesday because we left at midnight), so if you're interested go back to Monday.  T and I have tons of footage (like 17 minutes) from the previous weeks that still needs to be organized and posted, but it will happen.  

Moving on . . .

It has come to the attention of the lab that Intern K and RowBear do not actually view these posts.  So this seems a good place to talk about how much we are going to miss Intern K when he goes back to UCDavis and how worried we are that RowBear will be heart sick with loneliness.

How could you not miss that face?

Chin up RowBear.  You will love again.

Today's Tunes: Gym Class Heroes because his name is Travi and he's pretty much a big deal.

Up Next: More videos, promise.  Pinky swear promise.

- L

Fall asleep on against the window pane

Worked a 17 hour day, left the winery at midnight and came back before 7am.  Everyone is a little slow and bleary eyed today.  I see sluggish steps everywhere and most everyone has had to repeat himself several times for their own benefit.  Thankfully no fruit came in today, but we had to press yesterday's fruit and inoculate what came in last Thursday.  Pressing is the domain of the cellar but inoculation is all lab baby.  

First T and I start by re-hydrating yeast nutrient in super hot water.  The stuff is a fine powder that gets everywhere and never seems to settle.  Then we weigh out some dippin' dots (actually freeze dried yeast):

We add the yeast to the hot water/nutrient solution and wait 20 minutes.

After which time the yeast become active and begin to grow.  The solution gets frothy and fluffy and delicious.  The lab smells like a bakery, which to us is what signals the beginning of harvest.  At this point the yeast is around 100F and the juice we wish to inoculate is at 50F.  T and I have to slowly add cold juice to the yeast buckets to get the temperature difference down from 50F to around 18F.  This can take a long time because if you cool it down too quickly you can kill the sensitive yeast.  Usually it can take half an hour, but today it took us over an hour because we are sleep deprived.

When the mixture is at the right temperature we head to the cave to pitch the yeast to the barrels. And then its massive clean up time.  Half of what we do is cleaning up after ourselves not because we are particularly messy but because everything we do causes a sticky mess.  

And sanitation is key.

Meanwhile in the cellar . . . . 

Intern K swallowed some tartaric water and upchucked all over the cave.  

"No one told me not to swallow while siphoning."

We are going to miss him very much, but we're not sure if he'll miss us.

Elsewhere in the cellar . . . 

RowBear learned that if you've shoveled out one tank, you've shoveled them all.  Also, he learned that it's really unpleasant to shovel out a tank.

And side note:

Today this is a truck driver in front of the winery was doing his best goat impersonation: 

Ok. 7pm.  Only a 12 hours day today. Time to go home.

Today's Tunes: While rearing the yeast we listened to Outkast covers.  Thanks Matt Weddle and The Vines.  Yes it's only 2, and yes we listened to them on repeat.  On repeat.

Up Next: More Intern K.  Only 3 days left!

-T & L

Ground to dust and ash

Happy Monday.

When the crew arrived at the winery this morning at 7am, there were already 7 tons of Sauvignon blanc waiting for us in yellow lugs:

At 9am, another 7 tons came:

Then, at 11am we received another 15.6 tons.  Apologies for the grainy quality, our cave is dark.  The fruit was arriving faster than we could sort it, so it was put into the cave to keep cool, lest it start to warm up and ferment.  Those big boys are called macro bins.  We received 22 of them.

This winery has never, since it's existences (5 harvests) attempted to process this much fruit in one day.  More typically we process 7 to 12 tons a day comfortably.  Twenty ton days are pretty heavy, and a 30 ton day is unheard of.  We got close to that in 2005 because that was a huge year, 2009 was also pretty high yielding.  2007 not so much, and 2008 was laughably tiny in the Napa Valley.

While there was a lot of activity going on in the cellar, T was off in the hot sun collecting more cluster samples while I stayed behind in the climate controlled lab (as a punishment for bunging up the maturity samples last week, he knows what he did).  By noon we had gotten through 8 of the 30 tons, quick math says we're working a 16 hour day.  Besides processing more fruit than ever before, we have to barrel down last week's fruit.  And by we I mean the cellar guys.  Me, I just work on this blog, sometimes I send emails.

It is now 7pm.  Still a lot of fruit to go and people are getting cranky.

T went to get pizza for the crew.  If you lived in Napa, and worked overtime then you would be eating pizza like this with names like Vespa and Ducati:

T and I are eating this pizza.

7:30pm, dinner is over and T and I go to the destemmer (this literally separates the berries from the rachis and destemms the clusters) and help sort fruit.  

For 4 hours.

Finally it is clean up time.

This is out intern K. It is close to midnight now.  It is his first harvest, as you can see, he wants to shoot himself in the head.

Ok. Time to go home.

 Today's Tunes: While collecting fruit as his punishment, T listened to more Taylor Swift.  I had another Phoenix dance party.  Phoenix Pizza Party.  From 7pm to 11:30pm while sorting we listened to the best of early 90s rap. Thanks Warren G. 

Up Next: I swear I will learn how to upload a video.  

Also, Parting Words from Intern K's Last Week and RowBear Reviews.



Editor's Note: I learned how to post a video.  Here it is:



We will spice up future with a symphonic accompaniment but we didn't want to miss Intern K's sorting table gem.