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.

Venture a Venturi

Another technique to expose fermenting wine to oxygen is with the above process and device. A Venturi tube, in a wine cellar, serves the purpose of suctioning air into a line to expose the traveling wine to oxygen. After draining a tank of its juice, this Venturi tube is connected to a hose at the bottom. The juice is then fed back to the top where a sprinkler distributes it over the fruit. A very interesting relationship wine has with oxygen. Dependent on it for its young life, but in bottle or barrel it needs very little. Then at the time of consumption, it relies on the exchange again.

Enough about technique. This is hard work! My biceps are growing by the minute, and I'm constantly amazed at how much there is to do in what's considered a medium-sized facility. Even on a slow day we can put in nine hours, and the evening crew still needs to repeat every action from the day.
I'm ready to do some tasting.

Wine Play

Pinot noir is finicky, and while waiting for fermentation it likes lots of air. Lucky for this pinot, I was there with a fire hose to give it what it wants. The juice is drained from the bottom of the tank and pumped up through a hose over the cap.
The art of a pump-over.

Mis Botas

My boots. Don't be jealous.

Fermentation fog

The tanks are fast filling with fruit, and at $4,000-6,000 per ton, a large tank can easily hold $100,000. Now at various stages of fermentation, the cellar has a strong odor, and the CO2 from opening the lid of a tank hits your lungs with a burning sensation. Careful not to inhale, one could lose consciousness and become wine soup. The barrels were just fitted with new stave inserts to add oak tones without the expense of buying new barrels. They're waiting to be filled with the newly arriving chardonnay. The tourists standing on the rooftop deck are charmed; cellar workers are sleepy and nervous.

In the hose

Harvest has kicked into gear in Carneros with 50-100 tons of fruit arriving daily. The cellar crew is working in two shifts covering 5 a.m.- 2 a.m. Punch downs, pump overs, inoculations and nutrient additions take most of our attention. This is my first harvest, and as the only female on a crew of 20+, I have my challenges set out for me. Learning quickly, working fast, and averting efforts to turn me into an extra-curricular activity take most of my attention. Four-inch hoses like the one above will send the freshly arriving fruit from selection table to tank.

Ahh, the romance

Any fluffy ideas about wine making I've had in the past quickly vanished after a brief introduction to the production process. Don't get me wrong, the bubble may have burst, but I do not regret moving cross-country in the interest of learning how to make wine. I'm still as intrigued and interested in studying everything from tank punch-downs to the challenges of vine diseases, dry as it may seem. However, a wine cellar (not the part visible to tourists) is generally a concrete structure of little architectural interest and the wine is made by people who, in many cases, don't even care for the taste of it. A very different picture than I had imagined even three weeks ago. Prior to starting a job in production, I spent a few years buying and selling wine. Much of that time I spent with my nose in either a wine reference book or a glass. Somehow I thought that making wine would attract people with a passion for the product, but in this way it's no different than any other industry. Perhaps a naive idea, as though postal workers are passionate about mail. Still, a little shocked from this realization, I passed this port-a-john on the way to the winery this morning and it all became a little clearer. The romance of humans.