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.