Soap, Powder, Bleach, Dollars, Change, I'm Headed To The Laundromat

Happy Halloween, or something.

Did anyone dress up?  Because I didn't.  Saturday was a full day of work, and because the ferms aren't going to check themselves, I was back at work today.  Granted, it was not a full day's work.  But it's still 14 days straight at the winery.  In the past 7 weeks, I have not been at the winery 2 of the last 49 days. 

 I just had to fact check myself because it looked so rediculous when I wrote it.  

But I checked my calendar, it's true.

Today, after checking the fermentations, some light data entry and a few nutrient additions to feed the ambitious yeast in some fast fermenting tanks, I headed to do laundry.  Downtown Napa has few laundromats so it was a surprise to run into 3 other colleagues doing their laundry at the same place and time as me.  (No one coordinated this, we were all just desperate for clean clothes at the same time)

They are all Enologists at other Napa wineries, and it seems we all had Sunday afternoon off and lots of dirty (fermenting) clothes.  So the little bit of time off we all had, we spent talking about work.  Which is actually very typical.  Our work is not something that we can compatmentalize.  I don't know if that's the nature of the job, or the nature of the people who choose to do these jobs.  But either way, we spend horrendous hours at work, and when we are not at work we spend it with each other talking about work.  

We talk about yeast, look at those gorgeous bubbles

And our shopping trips

Usually we compare notes on the vintage or the different ways our wineries make wine, or what new equipment we are trying out, or what wines we've enjoyed recently (or not enjoyed), or how annoying it is to have tours traipsing through the winery.  And also, the egos and politics.  Excuse the presumptuous comparison, but I've always thought that the wine industry must be similar to Hollywood, or my idea of Hollywood from watching Entourage.  It's a very small industry, geographically centered, everyone knows everyone, and reputation is very important.  There is also this perception of glamor.  

Totally glamorous location.

Wine making sounds glamorous, at least I thought it did back in school.  And we definitely have our moments, but really, it's a dirty job.  And I don't mean dirty as in serious or difficult, I mean it literally.  Most of the time in the cellar you are sticky with juice or stained with wine.  Your hands turn black from handling the hoses.  You work with wet clothes because we are constantly cleaning and it's easy to get nailed with a stray hose.  I get yeast and glycol dripping on my hair.  Not to mention the weak teeth from all the wine tasting.  Besides the obvious staining, all that acid really wears down the enamel.  Maybe us wine people can take a page out of Mr. West's book, that would definitely bring back some of the glamor.

But back to the laundromat.

Actually, first I need to take a moment and tout a truly fantastic laundromat.  When I lived in San Francisco, my neighborhood laundromat was Joey's.

This place is classy

Not satisfied with providing only a laundry service, Joey's was truly a comprehensive place.

And sure the Napa laundromat doesn't smell like urine and I don't have to take a buddy with me to do my laundry and I'm no longer worried about trannies stealing my tank tops (I miss my old neighborhood), but would it kill Napa to get some ice cream and sausages into their facilities?

Anyway, 

Back to the Napa laundromat.

While talking to my fellow Enologists I realized that we are all spending too much time at work, and then too much time thinking about work when we are not at work (says the lady who comes home to write about work).  

But anyway, one friend was telling me about how tense it's getting at her winery because everyone is sick of each other.  Which is understandable.  We spend 12 to 14 hours, 6 days a week for 2 months with the same handful of people in very close quarters.  We get little sleep, become strangers to our families, neglect our health, miss appointments and special occasions.  We get dirty, we get sick and still we come to work at the butt crack of dawn and leave after the sunsets.  Of course personalities and egos clash.  Of course we all come close to losing it.  And of course some of us do lose it.

It was nice to see my friends because even though we do the same work, and all we talked about was work, they are still the first people I have interacted with that I do not directly work with.  

The season is wrapping up, and soon we can stop being work hermits.  Soon we will have evenings free
 again and I will catch up with what is happening in the rest of the world.  By which I mean visit all my homies in their wineries to talk about work and taste their latests wines.

(I think I may have a problem)

But for now, laundry is done and I'm going to watch people who are even more consumed by their careers than I am. 

The doctors on TV.

-L

I Promised To My Wife And Children, I'd Never Touch Another Drink

After all the rain and foggy mornings, the sun returned to Napa.

 

But only for a little while.

It appears we will have another wet (Halloween) weekend. 

We took advantage of the sunny day to have lunch outside.  Turns out T and GCMJ had mustard on the mind when they got dressed this morning but we didn't know it until they took their sweatshirts off at lunch.

T: "Well one of us is going to have to change."

I was bummed they didn't call me to coordinate, but then I remembered that I have my emergency mustard sweater in my locker for such a situation!

It's blurry, but that's what happens when I hand the camera over.  

I felt better, but I really needed a hat.  Then we found one.

GCMJ's chest is puffed out because he loves mustard and also because it's his birthday.

Happy Birthday to you sir!

After all that posing and wardrobe change, T and I hustled through our daily duties and we managed to get out of work before the sun went down, a feat not accomplished for several days (weeks?).  

We were running low on sanitation supplies (read: vodka), so on the way home today I stopped to pick some up.  We use vodka in a spray bottle to sanitize surfaces like the lab counter and the bungs on barrels when we sample them.

So I filled my shopping cart, and actually had to buy 2 different brands because they didn't have enough of a single kind.

 

Other times of the year (namely March thru May) my cart often looks like this:

We use this wine for our cork trials.  We soak corks we are interested in buying in this wine and then smell it 24 to 48 hours later to see if the cork imparts an off odors in the wine.  If it does, then we don't buy those corks.  More on that in March.

Anyway, part of making alcohol is buying lots and lots of alcohol.  

And I know I shouldn't but I still get embarrassed when I roll up to the cashier with a cart full of booze.

I always hope I don't run into anyone I know.  It's hard to not giggle a little when I hand my card over to pay $150 for large volumes of low quality alcohol.

However, more recently it has occurred to me that no one, not the cashier or the soccer moms in line with me ever throw any judmental glances my way.  

Which at first I found reliving.  

That is, until I found it a little insulting that they find it perfectly reasonable of me to buy 15 bottles of vodka or several boxes of boxed wine (often at 8am).  

I don't even get a casual "hey! party at your house!" remark.

I don't know, maybe it's obvious that I work at a winery and that all that alcohol is for professional purposes, because sometimes when I leave the winery my skin looks like this.

 

Unfortunately in that light it looks more like a skin disease, but I promise it's wine splatter.  And if that's how my skin looks, you can imagine my clothes.  (I've been planing a "This Is Why We Wear Black" post to illustrate the perilous destinies of harvest clothes)

So Ok, MAYBE people are picking up on the winery vibe.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . 

One last thing, 

I would like someone to tell all these birds that this is a winery and not a cemetery.

Another dead humming bird on the cellar floor.  Frankie rescued that other one last week, but this guy was not so lucky.  I don't know what it is about our place, but it seems to be the preferred resting place for several humming birds.  The lizards and frogs get trapped in the mouse traps, or stuck behind a tank so that's understandable.  But the birds have no excuse.  We don't find them caught in traps or stuck behind anything.  They float down, in open spaces (like the floor or on our forklift, see 10/8 post) and just die.

It's weird.

And unecessary.

Cut it out birds.

-L

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go. To the valley below

Ah, another Sunday, driving to work at 6:30am.

First I checked our tank fermentations, which don't usually take very long, but since every conceivable vessel is filled with juice or wine, ferm checks currently take an eternity.  Also, all the sampling valves have been removed from the tanks, so we have to open the racking valve to pull a sample every time.  Every time.  I know it sounds mundane, but I promise it is a pain in the ass.  Maybe I will make a video to illustrate.  Because really, it's bananas not having sampling valves.

It continues to rain, which makes the valley look incredibly lovely.  Sometimes when it rains, it makes places look depressing.  Like Cupertino in the rain is depressing.  But Napa in the rain is lovely.   A very different lovely than when it's sunny and warm, a more cozy romantic type of lovely.

This is the same view from yesterday's video.  It's still foggy, but you can at least see the vineyards, and some of the mountains.

After ferm checks and some light daydreaming, I set up a tasting of all our finished wines so far:

Sauvignon blanc on the left and reds on the right.  That's a lot of wine to taste early in the morning, or really, at any time.

As I'm sure I've made abundantly clear over these past weeks, harvest is a time of early mornings, late nights, and trying not to fall asleep on the forklift or the drive to and from work.  Because of this I believe that caffeine should be considered the third ingredient in wine making besides grapes and yeast.**  Our break room has several pots of coffee going at all times and the berry sorters consistently slam back red bulls throughout the day.

So I continue to impress myself with my restraint towards caffeine.  

I've never drunk the stuff and I don't intend to.  And like most things this can be traced back to my mother.

My mother is an addict.  

(She's not on the internet so I'm not conflicted about outing her)

That woman takes her coffee very seriously.  Growing up I saw how dependent she became on coffee to function and I decided early on that I would not follow in her footsteps.

Anyway, this evening she brought my baby sis to see me, since they were forgetting what I looked like.  And the woman brought her espresso machine to my house.  

Yeah she did.

To be fair, she doesn't always travel with it, but she knows I do not have my own coffee making device, so she brought hers.  Her visit was only a few hours, but that is how much that woman needs her coffee.  But she didn't just bring the machine and coffee beans from Guatemala, she also brought her special cups and her electronic wand to froth her milk.  Oh, and she also brought her own milk.

And yes my stove still has the tags and plastic wrap on it from when they delivered it several weeks ago because that is how much I cook, about as often as I have coffee.  Also, I live in an old Victorian that was built when they didn't believe in closets or counter space, and thought one electrical outlet per room was abundant, so the stove doubles as counter space and it's also the only place in the kitchen where you can plug the machine in.  They call that 'character'.

Goodnight Sunday, it's almost time to start another week.

-L

**Although caffeine will have to battle it out with beer, since it is already accepted that "It takes a lot of beer to make wine"

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

I got an email today from a fellow wine buddy commiserating about our harvest schedules.  

This morning (2am) I received another message from another buddy who was still at work, renouncing his previously "civilized" work hours.  Regardless of how under control and well staffed other wineries were, this rain really sent everyone into high gear.  Even if your winery wasn't busy before the rain, this week everyone raked in the overtime.

  Unless you are salaried, and then, sucks to be you.

Fruit to the left                  and                fruit to the right.

We pulled in everything save for 3 vineyards that we will have to pick next week.  You don't pick in the rain, and you don't pick immediately after the rain.  You have to wait a bit to let the grapes dry out.  This isn't great, but it's what happens sometimes.  We called in an extra crew so that we could work double how crazy hard we were already working, and even then, running around the clock, in our facility we just could not process the fruit as fast as we needed to.  So the fruit will have to wait out the rain.  

This means that after the crazyness of the past several week, we have several days of respite.  This should by no means be interpreted as a break from our demanding hours, there is still plenty to do with the grapes that did make it in before the rain, but we will not be harvesting for a while.  

And therefore the official end of harvest is still pending.  

Which I have mixed feelings about.

My friend's email was titled "All at Sea", which is already a most appropriate metaphor for the long voyage that is harvest, but was made more poignant by the appearance of the recent rains.  

I do feel like we are all at sea, or rather, at harvest.  Like harvest is a place rather than a time period.  It can be so encompassing that I feel like we are in a different place altogether.  

Normal life gets put on hold, doctor/dentist appointments, haircuts, birthdays, most everything that can absolutely be put off, does.  

Two notable exceptions have been: the birth of children and parole hearings.    

Quick side note: both our winemaker and our sister winery's winemaker have had babies this past week.  I guess one each isn't so bad, there is the urban legend about the winemaker who had triplets during harvest.  Which is actually a true story, I know the guy.  

But babies now?  

I cannot stress the poor timing enough.  

In the industry there is a widely accepted practice of calling the spouses of harvest workers 'harvest widows'.  I've always found it morbid how casually everyone uses it, but it's very apt at painting a picture of the situation.  The "widow" wives get together in mock support groups and keep each other company this time of year.  

I wanted to interview one, see what it was like from the other side.  But it's harvest and who has time for an interview, (not me).  But I really wanted to do it, so I tried to persuade T to pretend to be a harvest widow so that I could interview him and save time, but he wasn't having it.  So you can thank him for depriving us of valuable insight into the life of a harvest widow.

Anyway,

I have some great footage I am excited about putting together (including some of me doing a punchdown which is hilarious) but it's not ready yet.  I do have a quick mash up of the foggy Napa mornings, then Frankie found a bird in our cave and he brought him to me.  The guys know my strict 'if you find an animal in the winery bring it to me' policy.  

The last part of the video is me taking footage to show a group of tourists coming to watch us work.  (Do people come to watch you work? I think this is weird)  They do this all the time, especially during harvest because there is more to see.  Whenever they come I feel like we are zoo animals and they are waiting for us to do something interesting so they can take our picture.  So I've taken to filming/taking their picture back.  It's so obnoxious and I would love to rant about it, but it's late and I have to be at work early tomorrow, so I will table that rant.

 

 Special Shout Outs:

To my baby sis who's 10th bday I missed this week,

I'm sorry I couldn't be there baby!

To my BFF for being such a smarty pants and getting to do science with Laura Kiessling. 

Yay for lady scientists.

To Z for staying on the phone with me on my late night drives home from the winery,
making sure I don't fall asleep at the wheel and drive into the vineyards.

To T for being the best special lab intern of all time.  

Of All Time.

And of course,
To my fellow sailors on the USS Harvest,

we're almost home boys.

-L

Light at the end of the tunnel

It is officially Sweater Weather.

Things have really turned in the Napa valley since the last post.

We all tried to enjoy our Sunday off, until it started raining.  

Rain during Harvest is sucky (rot issues).  And one rain is fine, but then the weather said that it would be rainy for 5 days.  That much rain during harvest is murderous.  

And that is what has happened.  

Suddenly, we had to bring everything in.  I mean everything.  As busy as we have been, until Monday we had only pulled in about 65% of our total tonnage.  The remaining 35% has been coming in over the last 3 days.  And soon, we will be all done.  We have done more these past 2.5 days than we have in weeks.  So much so that we've had to call a temp crew so that we can run 24 hours a day.  That's right.  24 hours.

And we still have too much fruit to process and when it arrives at the winery it sits in the bins in our cold cave, queued up.  

The report that we saw Tuesday morning forecast ran for 5 days.  Now (Wednesday) it has been scaled back to this:  

But everything is still coming in.  

Besides the exhaustive hours, other problems we are running into are lack of tank space.  We currently don't have enough empty tanks to receive the incoming fruit.  The tanks we have are filled and still fermenting.  So we are having to scoot the wine out prematurely and barrel down before the fermentation is complete.  While this wasn't our original intention, it may actually have some positive effects on the wine.  Finishing the fermentation in barrel will give those lots more barrel contact time, and that additional time will allow the grape tannins and barrel tannins to better integrate and round out the wine.  At least that is the idea.

Another unforeseen issue is a lack of bins.  Usually how it goes is; the vineyard growers pick up our empty bins, takes them to their vineyards where they are filled with grapes and then trucked back to the winery.  We process the grapes, wash the bins, and they are picked up again by another vineyard.  

Well, since everything is coming in at once, we not only don't have enough to begin with, but we are also not turning them over quickly enough.  So what does one do?  Start calling our buddies with extra bins.  Usually these are Sparkling buddies, because the Sparkling wine harvest is much earlier than the Red Wine Harvest, so usually they are done by now.  (Thanks Sparkling Friends!) 

And it is unfortunate that Intern K and RowBear never got to see the real heart of harvest.  Oh sure, RowBear put in plenty of 15 hour days and if you ask him he's seen enough harvest for his lifetime.  But that was just bringing in the fruit.  Now we are bringing in more fruit than I can wrap my head around AND doing punchdowns AND pumping over all our tanks several times a day, AND barreling down AND pressing AND well, it's lively.  

But all this rain has further shortened the harvest and is brining it quickly to an end.  You'd think I would be looking forward to this more than I am, and maybe it's the sleep deprivation talking, but I'm not ready for it to be over.  It's been such an interesting season, full of new challenges and just when we're hitting our stride, it's hurtling towards the finish line.  No winding down, just a full halt stop.

But not yet.

It's almost 11pm, we've been here since 7am, some of us since 5am and we are not quite through.  So please excuse the typos and lack of video, I have to go help clean up.  But I have abundant footage that will be up soon!

-L

Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset

Last night marked the 6th consecutive Friday night we all spent at the winery, working late into the night.  Though leaving the winery at 8pm is undeniably better than previous Friday nights when we left at midnight.

Today marks the 6th consecutive Saturday that we are all at the winery bright and early.
As we get further into Fall the sun is rising later and setting earlier and its getting to the point where it's dark when we arrive and dark when we leave.  Normally this thought is endlessly depressing to me, but Thursday we had a "light" day and managed to catch both a beautiful, clear sunrise

and in the evening, a beautiful sunset.

 . . . . . . 

We had few vineyards to sample this week so T and I spent a lot of time in the lab together and all that lab togetherness brought out some competition, which came to a head on Thursday when he came in representing CalPoly.  I didn't know we were going  to battle, so I did not arrive at work prepared. 

Fortunately I keep an emergency UCDavis shirt in my locker for such occasions.  

Empirically I do not know how to judge this challenge, but I think t-shirt letter size is a good indicator that I emerged victorious.

The cooler weather and long hours have taken their toll.  We were one man down Friday and today.  The new guy Justin (who will henceforth be referred to as Beebs for his striking resemblance to Justin Bieber) fell ill and is recuperating at home.  Get well soon Beebs!

Gotta go, tanks need additions.

Be back soon!

-L

Boys Blowing Up Our Phones, Phones

Well, it wouldn't be a complete harvest without blowing out a tank.  

And I wish I could say an intern did it, but I cannot.

It was I.

Usually T and I make all additions together, but today was busy so we split up the tasks.  I went to make an addition to one of our Sauvignon blanc tanks, a task I do regularly without catastrophe.  However, this time the tank was really full.  I mean really really full.  

When the juice is still fermenting we need to leave generous head space because fermentation can become vigorous and well, the tank can blow out.  

This particular tank's capacity is about 3,000 gallons and it was full to almost the brim.  The fermentation had been progressing ok for several days so far, so I went to add yeast nutrients to the tank.  As the yeast are converting the sugar to alcohol they deplete nutrients and sometimes it's important to replenish them mid way through the fermentation so the yeast don't poop out and get stuck.  

Nutrients should be added slowly because they agitate the fermentation.  I know this and I added them slowly, and nothing happened.  So I added some more and there was bubbling, but not much else.  So I closed the lid of the tank and began to walk away.  

Four steps later I hear a loud hissing sound and turn back to look at wine shooting out of the lid.  It had only been a few seconds after I made the addition and the entire 3,000 gallon tank started to roll and foam and spew.  

I called back up (took some footage) and T quickly came up to undo the lid and help clean up.

So that happened.

Then we had an additional blow up when the juice jugs we collect to make our lab wine started to ferment (again) before we could get them into the proper container.  In the video you can see how fast and furious the juice wants to get out of the gallon jug.  Imagine how fast and furious 3,000 gallons can be.

So all this unintentional blowing up led to some very intentional blowing up.  

The boys decided to make some dry ice bombs, which provide simple ways to mess with your coworkers.  Also, they are crazy loud and dangerous. 

In the beginning of the clip T asks if I'm sure I want to be filming something OSHA would totally frown upon.  And by frown upon I mean dole out hefty fines and/or fire someone.  

This is my 4th Harvest, but my first time seeing a dry ice bomb.  I did want to film it.  

So, keep this on the DL and don't tell OSHA.

For serious.

To make a dry ice bomb you take a water bottle and fill it with a little water and dry ice, cap it, and let the pressure build up.  The boys had already made a few dry ice bombs before I got out there with my camera.  The first one had been unsuccessful, so at one point you see our unsuspecting victim pick up an old water bottle and chuck it to prove he isn't afraid of it.  Then ours explodes and well, we would have all been really sorry if he had picked it up.  

Um, again, don't tell OSHA.

. . . . . . . 

In other less illegal news, I am happy to report that Monday at 6am our winemaker's family expanded by one.  As soon as I heard (after feeling delighted for them), I immediately thought  how unfortunate the baby missed the birth date of 10/10/10.  

Q: How cool would that have been?  A: Pretty cool.

So anyway, imagine our 100 hour work weeks, and then imagine them with the responsibility of being the boss, and then imagine them with a new born.  

Fortunately he's handling it like a champion.  

So far anyway.  

Congrats Baby Momma!

Good Luck Boss!

Welcome baby!

Today's Tunes: T and I played "Guess The Artist" on Pandora.  The channel was Andrew Bird and that brought up all kinds of stuff.  But it was not as fun as when we played GTA on the Ghostland Observatory channel and we got Daft Punk and Journey back to back.  Journey? Really Pandora?

Up Next: More (legal) fun with dry ice.  Also, a Harvest Beard Championship Update.

-L

I Think You're Crazy, Maybe

On Friday night I left the winery at 11:30pm, but a lucky few stayed to clean up until 1am.  I've always wondered why wineries don't have on-call rooms with beds like hospitals do. At least like hospitals on TV do.  The guys (and ladies) left at 1am, drove the 40 minutes home, closed their eyes for a few minutes, then woke up to drive the 40 minutes back to work and begin another long day at 7am.  

By Saturday (the 6th straight day of this schedule) everyone is giddy with exhaustion.  This schedule is common at most wineries this time of year, I've been tempted many times this past month to sleep in my office to avoid driving home.  I'm not sure what the drunk driving statistics are in Napa, but I'm more curious about accidents caused by sleepy harvest drivers.  So if we can't have a sexy on-call room like TV, I think I should petition for a cot, or at least a hammock, or a yoga mat.  You know, for safety >_>

Also, you know how there's that one bar where all the doctors hang out? Where is that place?  I want one of those too. 

But I digress,

Everyone is crazy tired but the immediacy of tens of tons of grapes sitting out keeps us going.  We aim to process everything we received in the morning that same day.  We are usually successful, however Friday was a monster day and even though we went home averaging midnight, we could not get it all done.  The harvested fruit sat in the refrigerated room over night and when we got back to work Saturday morning we hustled through Friday's delivery as well as some new tons from that morning.

I was out in the cellar filming the crew processing the Pinot, when some of the guys (the ones giddy with exhaustion) wanted to show off for the camera:

The last bit of the video is a gaggle of geese I ran into today.  The footage is not terribly interesting, so I hoped Sufjan would liven it up, but I don't think it was successful.  Anyway, I included it because I thought it hilarious to run into those guys downtown.  I grew up in the city where I was more likely to run into a gaggle of trannies on my way to somewhere.  

I'm used to a very different downtown than I've found in Napa.  

Today is Sunday and it was my second day off in the past 4 weeks.  

I finally slept more than 5 hours at a time, caught up on the fall TV line up, tackled the pile of mail, paid some bills, made it to the grocery store (ran into geese), took the trash out, etc.

It was a wonderful but short 24 hours and now it's back to the harvest.  I wonder what everyone else did on their few hours off.  Hopefully not shave.
T Diddy, I'm talking to you.

-L

Up Next: I will hopefully have some good news about a new member of the team.  

A tiny new recruit.

Harvest Beard Championship Part Two and other stuff

Ah, Friday at 9pm and we are all still at work.  

Turns out last night's late night Chinese food and ice cream gorge was not such a good idea.  This morning 14 out of the 16 of us had tummy aches, for serious.  The other 2 have iron stomachs nothing short of a rotavirus could derail.  

It's really been one of those days.  I definitely brought my C game to work, and I know at least a few people brought their D games.  

However, there is some important business to update.  

C. Bear got a hair cut and face trim, thereby disqualifying himself for Harvest Beard Champion.  

Hairy Bear                           Trimmed Bear

A victorious T was already looking forward to shaving when this dude walked into the cellar:

The Dude                                           The Beard

However impressive his beard, he was not an employee or even technically an at home player and he had quite a head start on T's beard so I could not in good conscience crown him Harvest Beard Champion (as much as I wanted to).  However, it did motivated T to keep going despite being the only remaining contestant (and default winner of Harvest Beard).  I'm happy to report that T is still going strong (sorry Mrs.T!) and looks forward to making his Harvest Beard all that it can be.

So thanks cinematographer dude and beard. 

Dude and his beard and his friend were at the winery this week shooting some footage for a promotional video the winery is making.  I took video of them taking video because I liked how meta it was.  A wine maker filming the filmmakers who are filming the wine makers.  

I tried to give them helpful suggestions for making a successful winery film, like featuring T a lot and including forklifts and contemporary music.  And sneaking up on people.

And speaking of the forklift, we came out one morning to find a dead humming bird on it.  It looked like it's heart had stopped mid flight and it just gave up to rest on the back of the forklift.

It's morbid, I know.  But how often do you get to see one of these guys be still?

Today's Tunes: Barbie Girl by Aqua.  It was playing in the cellar today and I tried to get footage of the guys working with the song, but my camera could not capture the sound over T and my giggles.  It was priceless.  either way, I'd like to give a shout-out to 1997.

Up Next: More work. And work.  Saturday work.  

Also, if anyone else is working late harvest nights, don't let your Cellar Masters talk you into Chinese food and ice cream.

-T & L

Sometimes Bluvin needs lovin too

We thought we were busy last week, until this week happened.

Me: "Hey T, how do I impress upon people how busy we've been this week versus last week?"

T: "Last week was so September, but this week is October and October is popping off."

Well, there you have it.

The last Sauvignon blanc finally came in on Tuesday.  This marked the end of the White Harvest here.  Usually we have a solid week to two weeks of break between when the white grapes stop coming in and the red grapes begin.  However, this year's extraordinary weather patterns have smashed the white and red harvest together, a most unfortunate event.  The mild summer temperatures meant things took forever to ripen (delaying the start of White Harvest), and for several weeks we were twiddling our thumbs and cleaning tanks a million times to pass the time, then a few blazing hot days forced everything to get ripe (aka raisin) too quickly and we had to haul it in.  What we normally take 3 months to bring in has been shortened to two months.  

This has had some unintended consequences besides general fatigue and broken spirits.  

Being at work 14 to 16 hours a day for the last 11 days means I have not been able to pay any bills.  My rent is late and I think they are going to shut off my power soon, but since I get home around 10pm anyway and fall straight into bed, it may be a few days before I notice.  Other things that don't get done: laundry, grocery shopping and exercising.  My body misses yoga.  

T misses sleep and free time, but mostly he misses his family.  They are asleep when he leaves and asleep when he gets back.  He hasn't missed paying bills because he has auto-pay, which he says I should look into.  He also misses golfing.

T: "Golfing is my yoga."

Despite our 100 hour work weeks, even I haven't seen T as much as usual since he's been gone most days sampling the vineyards.

These are all the vineyard samples he brought back on Wednesday.  

We were using every container we could find to hold the grapes.  That was about 3.5 hours of collection and 3.5 hours of processing.  

Here are a few quick clips of our days this past week.  We've been working so late that we've been ending our nights by eating pizza dinners by forklift light.  In other forklift related fashion: Frankie shows off his forkifting skillz by flipping a penny.  All of the above vineyard samples provided us with plenty of juice for our Lab Wine Project.  However, a most unfortunate side effect of being so busy is forgetting about said lab project.  Since filling Rita, we collected more juice to fill another 5 gallon carboy, however, we left the juice sitting out too long and in too warm conditions and the bottles started to ferment on their own.  We came in Thursday morning to a big mess in the lab since overnight the bottles started to ferment and subsequently explode.  Then we put the rest of the bottles in the sink to relieve the pressure and well, you'll see what happened.  Unfortunately the first bottle was the most impressive and that was not caught on camera.  

We lost a fair amount of juice, but we got some more and now Rita has a mate.  We expect great things from Finton.  Firstly his juice is more ripe than Rita's was and has more color.  We also will not be mixing in SB juice with our Cab.  Another difference is that Rita was inoculated with fancy yeast, but Finton is all native baby.

Dinner time!  

We are all heading out into the night for Chinese food (by forklift light) and GCMJ also bought some ice cream to reward the hardworking crew.

-T & L

Sorry, I Cannot Hear You, I'm Kinda Busy

A busy busy week.  

Then a busy busy weekend.  

Why so busy?

Well, for one, we have received significantly more fruit than we were expecting from some vineyards.  

And the recent heat wave sped up the ripening process and a lot of grapes were ready to be harvested all at once.  

Monday through Thursday we put in some solid 12 hour days but Friday was a monster day that kept us at the winery for 16 hours.  We left close to midnight, went home to sleep for a few hours and then Monster Friday was followed by a Saturday that nearly broke some members of the team.  Emotions were running high; there was some talk of quitting, several passive aggressive quips and even a few tears (which may or may not have been shed by yours truly).  

Most held strong, props to the boss and Grand Cellarmaster J for rallying the troops.  

Everyone is sleep deprived, however Saturday night I had an opportunity to see The Flaming Lips in Oakland. 

So I decided to try to put the events of the week behind me and treat myself to some hearing loss.

Firstly, The Fox in Oaktown is a lovely venue.  

And it was refreshing to spend time in a proper city with proper night life, unlike certain places I know (*cough* Napa *cough*) that shut down at 8pm.

Secondly, I passed the night with two respectable facial hair efforts.   

 Z has been sporting an honorary harvest beard, which he started at around the same time as T and C.Bear.  

It's mostly out of laziness than any true competitive motivation, but either way, it's rockin'.  Who knows, maybe an at home player will win this years.  Gotta keep those boys on their toes.

The lady in the pic is Jen, the gentleman with her is Tim and that fine specimen on his face is Sir Barclay Aldrich Esquire, the Fourth.  

Yes Jen, I agree, it is frighteningly distinguished.

*(This space reserved for some concert footage for when I find time to put it together)*

I'm glad I took the time to go to the concert, but this morning at 6am (while driving the hour back to work to spend Sunday with the winemaking team catching up on all the paperwork that has piled up over the week) my choice didn't seem so wise.

Fortunately, half way through the day we took the data entry party out of the office and down to the local watering hole to finish with beers and baseball (go Giants!).

These guys are not part of the team but they were sitting near us, I just thought it was hilarious that they were sitting on tiny chairs.  You are grown ass men, why are you sitting on tiny chairs??

'Maybe because there were not other chairs to sit on' you may reason, but no, there were plenty of other chairs for them to sit on.  

'Maybe they have small children' would also be an acceptable guess.  

But no, they did not.  Just some grown ass men on tiny chairs.

Anyway, 

I think this may have been a mistake, since T will find it difficult to go back to doing data entry unless he has 3 beers to himself.  

See how sad he is just thinking about it?

Buck up Champ!

The rest of us had beers too, but it didn't make us sad.

At the end of the day we had had enough beer and we toasted to a job well done with ice cream.

 

I'm going to sleep.

-L