Landslide in the Douro

There was only one tank left in the cellar to press when the rain started, and with it came the hillside. Everyone was fine, just a little shaken. A messy, but memorable way to finish the harvest.

The front of the house after many hours of clean-up.

The backhoe from the inside.


The pool pre-landslide.

And after.

A Little of the View

Douro Fruit

A view from the new terraces being built above the winery. Looking over the Douro River.


New terraces being built from the near-dust that makes up the earth.



When the fruit arrives it passes on this table for selection.

Vedemmia, Douro, Portugal

Foot-treading is still practiced in the Douro region. These open concrete tanks, referred to as 'lagars', are about 10x15 feet and 3 feet deep. Every morning people are treading in the tanks singing.

Trucks drive from the high terraces above the river and unload in this area.

A look From the Inside

The view from top,

I know them all by name.

The Cellar Swallowed Me

As many experience during vintage, I have no life outside the cellar. Up and down I climb the 3-4 story catwalks that sprawl in all directions. Checking a pump here, adding yeast there, and stumbling over my own particular blend of Spanish and Portuguese. While I'll be posting more details, it may be documented a bit more in pictures this time around.

Adega

I promise a vintage update soon, but until then here's a bit of the view.

Vendemmia Alentejo, Portugal 2009

My walk to work. Pretty nice. Amid 75+ hour weeks, Alentejo offers some excellent scenery.
Big sky, vineyards and olive groves forever.

Carneros Fog

The Carneros region is famous for the fog that comes off the San Pablo Bay and hangs in the vineyards, giving the vines much-needed moisture. The wind machines are used to help circulate the air and prevent frost.

Barreling Down

After taking a break for the holidays, a rather dry Napa winter is in full swing. One by one the tanks have been emptied and sanitized with the wine now living in these excellent French oak barrels. Now the main focus in the cellar is topping the barrels and adding sulfur dioxide to keep the wine stable. Aging wine from past vintages is also pumped out of their barrels and mixed
in-tank to stir the sediment.

Season Change

Like clockwork the rain started as soon a the last fruit arrived. It makes working a bit less pleasant, but a rather impressive show of textbook maritime climate.

Wine Hands

The last of the cabernet arrived last week and marked the end of the harvest season here in Northern California. One by one the tanks are being emptied of their extended maceration inhabitants and my hands are stained purple. I think it's permanent. We are still performing many punch down and pump-over techniques like the one above referred to as a delestage (del-ess-TAHJ). This benefits the wine by exposing it to oxygen and separating seeds, ultimately resulting in smoother tannins.

Tagging

Each barrel is tagged with a lot number, vintage, varietal, vineyard, type of oak and the last date moved.

Shh! Wine sleeping

The most serene place in the winery is the barrel room. Thousands of wines laid down to mature in oak and blow off their youthful, under-developed tones. Gregorian chants echo quietly here, and I like to wander through the aisles to catch my breath when the cellar gets too hectic.

In the Cali Sun

These tanks hold fermenting wines in our outside cellar. The grapes go from the selection table into one of these, and if it's a red, it generally goes into cold-soak for a couple days before warming to inoculate with yeast. The cold-soak process involves maintaining a low temperature by keeping dry ice in the tank 24 hours a day. It also keeps the fruit covered in a layer of CO2 which preserves its quality to extract color from the skins.
Cold inside the tank, but pretty pleasant working outside with the sun shining.

Chard Fest

Most of our Chardonnay came in last week. The fruit arrives on trucks of all sizes carrying these half-ton micro-bins. The vineyard name and block is specified on the sign, and it goes to the selection table or directly to the hopper, depending on the quality. The selection table is used for the more expensive fruit to insure the leaves and detritus is removed, whereas the lower quality fruit is used to make bulk wine for blending.

Young Love

I found a little bit of my vim hiding in these tanks of fermenting wine. Spending my days gazing into tanks has become a fascinating introduction to some intriguing young hopefuls. Watching them develop day after day has taken on some form of relationship--it's like I'm dating. There's a tempranillo in tank 310 that's peaking my interest, and the merlots with their sensual aromas are quickly becoming my favorites. Everyday I notice something new on the nose or find their colors becoming richer. I find myself wondering if I'll like some next week as much as I do now, and imagining the day I'll say 'goodbye' when they go off for barrel aging.
Perhaps the long hours and lack of sleep is finally showing.

Tank Cleaning

About half of the work in the cellar is some form of cleaning. Tanks, hoses, pumps, and every piece that connects them must be fully sanitized between uses. Most is done manually, and looks like this. My good friend Oso above is scrubbing out a 1,000 gallon tank, which is pretty tight quarters.

Hoser

Maybe it's the middle of the week, maybe it's just exhaustion, but I'm lacking inspiration for the vino today. Maybe a good article on dry farming could perk me up, but sometimes the reality of wine-making is a back ache. Perhaps a little touring is an order. I'll report back.

Dreaming In the Lab

This wine cellar is overflowing with macho men. Not for the faint of heart, this is a world full of the coarse and grimy. When I leave at the end of the day, my hands are stained purple and I'm covered in a sticky mess. Being one of two women currently working in a group nearing thirty is not all it's cracked up to be. When passing by the laboratory, where all are female, I gaze longingly. Soothing music plays overhead with intelligent conversation, and I think, 'What am I doing out here?'. So to bring a bit of balance to my life, when I finished in the cellar today I went to the lab, where they were looking particularly overwhelmed. Fruit samples piled high on every surface, they wasted no time showing me some basic procedures to lighten the load. Testing for brix (sugar levels) and running pH analysis with the machine pictured above were my first lessons, and I was thrilled to finally see all their cool gadgets. Seriously, the lab has the best gadgets. A few hours later I felt human again, reassured that I could battle my way through another day of machismo. Oh, and one of the perks to not being cooped in the lab is a better view.