What happens when you don't have a forklift

When I wrote about the Barbera Harvest there was an important step I neglected to mention because I didn't have the pictures.  Special thanks to Todd's mom for chronicling a very tedious process and letting me step back as photographer and jump in to the work.  Not that I could have gotten away with being the photographer anyway.  There was way too much work to do.

This shows what happens when you make wine at home without a fork lift, or a pallet jack.

Todd and I  picked up the Marsanne and Viogner as well as the Teroldego in his truck because they were only half tons each.  A full ton of Barbera was not going to fit in his truck, so we had it delivered by the vineyard owner.  We didn't really know what the plan was.  We had a vague delivery time and no information on how it was going to arrive.  We waited outside my house and then a large UHAUL arrived.  Turns out he was delivering more than just our Barbera that day.

Dave, the vineyard owner showed up around noon ready to unload the bins, but we had no way of unloading them.  Fortunately Dave was a really cool laid back guy and fortunately we had an empty half ton bin.  So without a forklift the only thing we could do was transfer all the grapes by hand.  

It was a very daunting task.

So Dave, Todd, his dad Bill and myself proceed to grab fistfuls of grapes out of the half ton bins and  put them into 5 gallon buckets.  Then we emptied the buckets into a 30 gallon brute on wheels and pushed the brute up the driveway towards the other halfton bin.  

 Bill is taking full buckets of grapes to the half ton bin.

 And bringing back the empty bucket.  We filled the brute and rolled it over as well as taking individual buckets to the bin.  Anything to try to speed the process up and let Dave get on his way.

Another slight exaggeration of Todd's tall-ness and my tiny-ness (and he's hunching over!)

 We had to hurry up and get the grapes out of the truck because Dave needed to deliver the remaining grapes to the other buyers.  There were 10 bins in the truck and only 2 belonged to us.  Dave's go-with-the-flow attitude really helped lower the stress of the situation.  He saw we didn't have a forklift and just jumped in and helped move grapes.

Once all the grapes in the top bin had been transferred to the bin on my driveway, we dropped the bin we had just emptied onto the ground repeated the process by emptying the second bin into the first one.

We were just trying to get our grapes off the truck so that Dave could deliver the rest of the load.  After an hour we had 2 bins full of grapes on my drive way, but the tank is in the back of the house so it took another hour to hand-transfer the grapes from the front of the house to the back garage.  It was a massive leap-frog operation.  

A pallet jack would have saved us.  Turns out craigslist has them used for about $200.  

Live and learn.

Forklifts are a little more expensive.  

-L

Day 15: Saturday September 8th

 This was the third Saturday in a row that we harvested some fruit.  At 11am we had half a ton of Teroldego being backed into my backyard.

 It's a pretty tight fit and because of the limited space one has to back up the whole way with very little visibility.  Also, the truck was borrowed so there was additional pressure to return it in perfect condition.  Those of you who know me are familiar with how I treat vehicles.  So it was up to Todd to back it up.

 With excellent truck maneuvering skills, Todd quickly had the truck parked behind my house and at the entrance to the winery.

 Since the tank is filled with Barbera, we had to destem and ferment into a second half ton bin.  We set the destemmer on top of the bin, backed the truck up close to us and started moving fist fulls of clusters from the truck to the destemmer.  We did not call for back up this time, but Zac was on hand to be photographer and move clusters.

 The plastic bin was supposed to catch the stems.  It did a poor job.

 Todd fed the clusters, I cranked the destemmer.  It took us a little over an hour to get through the whole bin.

Then it was time to clean up.

Teroldego.  Not a cultivar I have ever had before (or heard of actually), but an Italian friend mentioned it would go well with Barbera so what the hell.  I'm taking the leap of faith that this Italian knows his Italian wine.  Did I mention this is the same Italian who sold me the fruit, so there is that to consider . . . . .

While Todd and I cleaned up, Zac ran to the store to pick up a bag of dry ice.

We use dry ice to cool the grapes and protect the headspace before inoculation.  If it didn't cost $18 per bag, I would buy it all the time because, man, dry ice is awesome.

Also, the only application I know for dry ice is winemaking, so it was surprising to me that they sell it at the grocery store.  What do normal people use dry ice for?

Then we covered the bin with a tarp and wrapped it tight with bungee cords.  Before all the dry ice was gone, I stole a piece to go into the white barrel.

One more harvest day to go. And many, many punchdowns.

-L

Day Eight: Saturday September 1st

The Barbera Harvest

Behind my house I have a cavernous unfinished building that the previous owner used to store his boat.  You know what they say, one man's boat garage is another woman's winery.  We currently have a one ton stainless steel fermentor, a half ton bin and the de-stemmer set up there (pictured).  Also a 30 gallon brute on wheels and several buckets.

The tank was last used (and cleaned) over a year ago.  I hopped in to scrub with Peroxy Carb (Sodium percarbonate), a miracle oxidizing cleaning agent.  Then a quick rinse with Citric Acid, to neutralize all the base we use.  This gets the tank clean but to sanitize we rise with PAA (peracetic acid).  PAA sanitizes by disrupting the microorganism's cell membrane.  It may be home winemaking, but we clean like professionals.

Having learned from the white wine endeavor, this time I called back up to help tackle the ton of Barbera.  I invited 3 very good friends and Todd invited his dad.  Chelsea, Dan and Alison (the photographer).  They are verygood friends because they all work in the wine industry and they took their day off from winemaking to come make wine at my house.

 

Here you can see Chelsea's hand feeding individual clusters underneath the rollers so that the fruit can be de-stemmed but not crushed, otherwise the fruit would be going between the rollers.  But that is a dumb way to do it and I don't know why they even make crusher/destemmers.  Dan's arm is cranking the gears that turn the de-stemmer.

Since feeding one cluster at a time is painfully slow work, we got Todd's dad on the other side to slip in clusters under the rollers.  Without compromising quality, you want to process the fruit as quickly as possible.  Get it out of the picking bin and into the tank.

Chelsea and Todd's dad are feeding clusters through either side.  Dan is operating hand crank on the destemmer, and Todd is collecting the whole berries that are falling into the bottom of the bin.  

Todd is scooping the berries from the bottom of the bin with a plastic beaker into a 5 gallon bucket.

Ideally one would de-stem directly into the tank (or other fermenting vesel).  But because of how tall the tank is, we couldn't put the de-stemmer on top of it.  Fortunately Todd is also tall.  So we de-stemmed into a bin on the floor and bucketed into the tank.

This picture only slightly exaggerates how tall Todd is and how tiny I am.  It reminds me that we are a good team.  He can reach over tall things, and I can get inside them.

It took us about 2 hours to get through the fruit.  It was so great to have so many people around.

My job was to collect the stems that were coming out of the de-stemmer and dump them in the yard waste bin.  It's not a pleasant job because it means you get sprayed with juice and then the bees are more attracted to you.

I'm keeping this picture because it's the only one with Alison in it.  I'm going to pretend she did this on purpose to be a part of the memories.

The stems from one ton of Barbera fit into the standard yard waste bin.  But it didn't get collected for several days so it smelled awful.  The hazards of home winemaking.

Todd, me, Chelsea, Dan.

The de-stemmed berries in the tank.

Tank lid.

After processing the fruit we had a nice BBQ and lots of wine and beer to celebrate.  My friends are the best.

We have more days of harvesting coming up, anyone want to come over?!

-L

Day Two: Sunday August 26th

Red wine is fermented with the skins (because that is where the color and flavor are and after the fermentation is complete the wine is pressed to separate out the skins and seeds.  Conversely white wine is typically separated from the skin and seeds before fermentation.  As soon as the fruit is harvested it is pressed and only the juice is fermented.   

White wine doesn't need the color and tannins from the skin, however we wanted a little bit of skin contact because there are flavors we wanted to extract from the skin.  Gravity does a little of the work for us because the bottom berries break and release juice from the weight of the fruit on top, so you can see the juice start to puddle at the bottom of the bin.

 After 24 hours of letting the de-stemmed fruit hang out in a half ton bin with dry ice, it was time to press it.  This is an old school press that I borrowed.  My partner Todd looks a little confused because neither of us had used one before and we weren't sure if we were putting it together right.  We knew how to use it in theory and had seen others do it, but had not actually operated one ourselves.  We decided the learn to use it the very second we needed to start using it.  This was the first of many mistakes we were about to make.

Part of not knowing how to operate the press involved forgetting to borrow the level that lets you turn the press.  So we tried with a wrench until it was obvious it wasn't going to work and then took a trip to pick up a lever.  Next we loaded the press with the whole berries and as you crank, the top presses down and the juice is supposed to leak through the wooden slats and collect in the bucket.  Well, that didn't happen.  Mistake 2 was filling the basket too full.  We got ambitious and filled it too full and could not press properly.  So we had to empty about half back out.  

Mistake 3 was not having proper drainage.  The whole berries would compact and trap the juice, usually you can leave some stems in the basket to create channels for the juice to drain out.  This meant that no matter how hard we cranked, we were not getting very much juice.  My dad (who stopped by to visit because I told him we just going to be pressing "real quick") jumped in to lend some muscle but it was no use.  All the effort was getting us nowhere.  

At this point my dad had to go.  With pity he looked at the mountain of work we had, looked at us and said a prayer on his way out.  In 2 hours we had managed to get 15 gallons.  With half a ton, we should have 80 by the end of it.  Several hours after starting, we still had a long way to go.

So after he left, Todd and I re-evaluated and abandoned the press for a tried and true method. . . .

 With sanitized rubber boots I jumped in the bin to stomp the grapes.  Within a few minutes we were getting more juice from my stomping than the last 2 hours wrestling with the press.  

Otherwise we were never going to get any juice out of the grapes and it was getting late in the day.  Also, it was so much fun.  At first. 

I'm smiling for the picture because this was taken the first hour of stomping, but after 5 hours we were both very grumpy.  Mistake 4 was grossly underestimating how long this would take us and not asking for help.  Since de-stemming went well, we thought we could knock out the pressing in 2 or 3 hours (it took upwards of 7), and we also started in mid afternoon instead of first thing in the morning.  The stomping didn't take very long but then we had to collect the juice and skins in a small bucket and put it through a kitchen strainer to separate the skins and seeds and then bucket the juice into 2 barrels.

And the most miserable part of winemaking is after the main job is done you have another giant task of cleaning up.  The second most miserable part of winemaking is how sticky you feel all the time and how your clothes start to ferment if you dont wash them right away.  I don't always get to wash my clothes right away.  Gross.

-L