Harvest in Pictures

  This is Abe of The Scholium Project.

 The destemmer.  Pretty Cool.

A result of walking into a fork lift on Day 1.

Oak kibble for the non purists at the Yeast Department Store.

Climbing into the bin for punch down

Punching away with the punch down tool.

Checking out the fruit at Hudson Vineyard.

 

Very ripe fruit featuring friendly mold.

 

The crew, from left to right, Johanna, Abe, Helen and Graeme.

My little bird's nest.

The Thirsty Caterpillar

I looked forward to Fridays when I was working at The Office. The weekend was always a welcome escape from my last job. Wine making is not a desk job. At least it isn’t at a smaller winery and definitely not during harvest. I had this realization my first day. There is always something to do even if there is some downtime in between. A day might start out unplanned, in the vines to check the fruit at the request of the grower, which we did on Friday. The work schedule is planned out week by week and can change on a daily basis. Working weekends is a given. Harvest also means working around the clock to keep the chemical reactions moving along.

I think one of the biggest adjustments I had, and this is more likely a function of being a newbie, was becoming accustomed to waiting to be told what to do. At The Office, I was in management so this was a role reversal for me. While I was eager to be helpful and make a contribution at the winery I couldn’t really be proactive about it. By the end of the week though, in the realm of responsibility that I was able to take on, I was able to anticipate what I could do next. Even if it was cleaning up. By Friday, I gained more confidence and knowledge than I thought was possible in a mere six days.

People who know me well have commented (and complained) that I’m fiercely protective of managing my time, on a professional and personal level. I don’t like long meetings or lingering at a restaurant once the bill has come. I don’t like talking on the phone except when it’s a catch up session with a long distance friend. I confirmed two things on this trip that I need to work on; the first is becoming a better listener and the second is being more present. While there were many moments this week where I was very much in the moment, these are stubborn blemishes on my consciousness.

At the beginning of the year, you might remember I resolved to simplify. I still have work to do because all too often my mind wanders to Stuff. The voice in my head that reminds me to update my resume, send my friend Liz a belated birthday gift, look up that article someone mentioned, download the African music that was playing on the crush pad. Does this sound familiar? I’ve started writing things down because I’d exhaust even more of my awareness trying to set a mental alarm clock to remind myself of all the things I wanted to remember.

Right now I’m entering a period of major transition, a metamorphosis of sorts, like a caterpillar. As I drove back to Oakland at the end of the day Friday, I felt an assemblage of nostalgia, sadness, relief, satisfaction and wonder; I know I’ll be back soon. It has been an adventure, which brings me to Helen, a petite blonde tornado also from NY who started her internship at the winery back in July. She left NY in June, just after her 30th birthday in pursuit of fabulous roman candles and farming experience stopping first along the way in the Midwest to assist a sustainable agriculture co-op. She talked about working harvest in New Zealand next. I admire her fearlessness and wish her speedy success in achieving her badge of honor at the winery: purple hands by the time she leaves California.

It really has been an adventure for me on so many levels and it best captured by a special experience I had one day. Early in the week, I wandered into the vines at the winery for a bit, looking at small, left over clusters of grapes when I came upon a little bird’s nest tucked away in the leaves. It was a sweet discovery and certainly a metaphor for things to come. I will drink it all in little sips.

The Ferm

There is the Ferm Bible. And there is the referm. The Ferm Bible is a marble notebook that I often heard referred to during the past week. Brix testing and temperature results are recorded in the book.

Fermentation is usually left to occur on its own with naturally occurring yeasts but when the little guys don't behave, store bought yeast is a last resort to reinvigorate the fermentation process. This is called referm.

There were two errands today: go to the yeast department store and go to the wine making hardware store where tanks of SO2 are sold in the same method you'd get a tank of butane for a grill.

Speaking of grills, lunch was at Dan's Giant Burgers. A greasy spoon icon in Fairfield where two young ladies flip and fry patties while chatting up customers. Abe, Graeme, Helen and myself sat at the counter next to a case where strawberry cream pie awaited should any of us have room for dessert.

Dan's Giant Burgers is a slice of Americana as big and bright as the quarter inch slabs of American cheese they use there. This week was as much about learning wine making as learning about the locals, and the people passing through, like Helen. I'll save my final post to talk more about Helen and some other of the characters of the cast who colored my week so vividly.

I can't believe tomorrow is my last day and it is bittersweet.

Feeling Punchy

I was in the Rhone Valley this past April and visited about 20 different wineries there during my trip. Some were small wineries, others were massive. I wish I could remember the production levels of some of the smaller wineries to benchmark how small Scholium actually is in comparison. I had no idea ALL the labeling was done by hand. Can you tell that was today’s main assignment? No complaints just amazement.

I got to spend a good amount of time with the wunderkind, Graeme today, Abe’s assistant. I just realized I am 11 years older than him but Graeme is an old soul. When I told him this he laughed and said people had been saying that to him since he was a baby. Graeme comes from a family of grape growers. He went to UC Davis for their viticulture program and had considered the grad route briefly. But it was clear to him he was overeducated between his undergrad and practical experience so he pursued internships instead. Working with Abe was his fourth internship.

The harvest from Saturday meant a schedule of pump overs and punch downs would occur over the next several days. This process needs to occur every six hours during fermentation. Pump overs are fairly intuitive; redistribute the juice that settles beneath the fruit in the tank with a pump. Punch downs are effectively the same thing except fermentation is occurring in a barrel. I had the night shift, which started at midnight and I was told to bring shorts. There is a tool that can be used for punch downs that penetrates the ‘cap’of Carbon Dioxide and fruit at the top of a barrel but the best way of doing punch downs is getting IN the barrel.

A picture says a thousand words but I forgot the cord to my camera, so I’ll have to save the images for post-harvest.

Oxbow Market

Driving today to Napa took an hour and a half in the rain. I overdosed on NPR.

We started at Oxbow Market (think Chelsea Market in NY or the Ferry Building in San Fran) which is the equivalent of Napa's town square. One of the many aspects of harvest that I wish a desk job shared is a shorter day or even more decadent, a day off for rain.

Since my post yesterday was longer than I promised, today I'll be brief:

1- More Brix testing
2- Relabeling bottles (you know why if you read yesterday's post)

We ended at about 3:00p and I was thankful. I realize that learning a new skill after reaching a certain point in life involves negotiating ego and is probably the most difficult piece of machinery I've had to learn to manage so far this week.

French Oak

I will start with the most 'important' lesson I learned today: you should presume that a wine maker uses French Oak barrels. You cretin.

I haven't been sleeping well as I have many things on my mind that will be revealed later this month. Also, it doesn't help that my significant other has been watching Fringe, that Sci Fi show that never fails to gross out viewers with people morphing into dripping creatures, self combusting villains and other nightmare inducing scenarios involving throbbing veins and oozing blood.

I've been waking up exhausted, about 45 seconds before the cheery ring tone of my alarm goes off. Those 45 seconds are painful and precious, especially at 5:59 am. It was still dark out by the time I drove north; it was that time of day you experience only with anticipation of a flight or a major hangover.

I picked up Johanna whose car was in the shop and she looked lovely as ever even at that hour. I decided she looked like Ingrid Bergman.

Today's mission included packing orders at a local wine merchant where Abe shipped out his wine. Before hours, the shop was turned into a mini assembly line where about a dozen people including myself fulfilled orders. The tape dispenser was not my friend and my boxes were clearly distinguished by their Sharpei quality with all the folds of my taping job. I redeemed myself when I discovered that there were some mislabeled bottles in some cases we were pulling. I realized how human a process wine making was. This made me feel, well, human.

There was Brix testing back at the winery, a lab method of checking the sugar level in wine. Then there was racking; in the simplest terms, moving wine from tank to barrel. There are some multipurpose machines that are used in the wine making process; a pump is one of them. The pump has two immensely long hoses, I'd guess about 18 feet long for input and output with metal joints that attach in a way that makes me have a new a new appreciation for the simplicity of velcro.

Finally, Abe did some early blending of finished wine for aging and then dosed some other barrels with sulfur to stall malolactic fermentation. Malic acid (that gives zip to a green apple) is converted to lactic acid during the wine making process. Californian wines are notorious for going through what's referred to ML to yield those BIG buttery wines. The sulfur acts like Xanax so to speak. Of course there was cleaning to do at the end of the day.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. I'm hoping that means we can linger in the lab and talk about Mad Men.

Funemployment

My other half helped me see the glass half full: FUNEMPLOYMENT. While I had (actually, I still have) incredible anxiety over my new work status (or rather, lack there of) I decided to stop talking the DONEDOTCOM talk and start walking the walk.

So here I am in Napa, Day 1 of 7 for me at a harvest internship that I persuaded my wine maker friend Abe to bring me on for. It also happens to be Day 10 of Sober October. This year, Sober October is easier and harder than in years prior. Last year I had the marathon to keep me on the wagon. This year I planned to run the San Francisco marathon...in 2010. All I can say the past three Sober Octobers have trained me well and I am ever thankful for near beer. Still, at the end of the day, I miss wine. A lot.

So, ironically, back to harvest. Today I was greeted at The Winery by Johanna. A tall, lovely woman whose legs I envied because she was ALL legs and a Hollywood smile. Johanna organized events and I was her back up today.

There was a crush of Temperanillo and Chardonnay that took place today as well as a tasting of nine new releases from Scholium wines for Abe's incredibly loyal fans. I learned to work a power spray. A power spray is like a bionic water pick for cleaning things. There was a lot to clean.

I got to manage the destemmer, too, which was a matter of waiting for grapes to pass through a destemming machine and fall into a chute to be crushed then funneled into a huge barrel. Manage means, push the black button on when the bin catching the grapes was full and push the red button when it was empty.

Then there was more cleaning. I worked most closely with Jacob, a nubile winery hand who started working harvest two years ago, when he graduated high school. Jacob knew more about the wine making process than probably 90% of the Internet novices that descending upon Napa a decade ago. I was humbled by his knowledge.

Abe is a unique person as are his wines. This will be a week to remember.

Top three things I learned today:

1- Look where you're walking at a winery- I smacked my shins more than once into forklifts.

2- Tuck your pants into your rubber boots- operative words POWER SPRAY.

3- Manual labor is cathartic- I didn't have to talk to people today.

I'm Still Standing

I can’t believe that I haven’t written since January! Well, better late than never. Really though, it had been so long, I took it upon myself to re-read my past posts. My first observation is that…well, I’m a bit prolix. My promise to you is that I will keep it brief.

Second, so much still does ring true (despite all my hot air), especially the key takeaways from the post on Outliers (the part about Practical Intelligence, the link between job satisfaction with effort and reward and, finally, how making something meaningful helps to connect effort and reward.)

I told you I was considering taking the GMAT (not anymore), I had trained and run the NY Marathon (I have not run longer than 3 miles since), I was bordering on burnout (the status of this one’s complicated), I introduced the Waltons, the Keatons and the Huxtabiles (an had my identity ‘stolen’ since), I embarked on developing a TLC (The Lifestyle Calculator is style a myth). Lastly, ‘08 was great and ‘09 was fine (the latter, not so much). The economy is still in the throes of a recession and I’m on the frontline: I lost my job on September 14.

The definition of DONEDOTCOM has come to take on a whole new meaning now. It starts with a clean slate for me as I can choose my own adventure now. I plan to take you along as I reinvent myself starting by a commitment to try and write daily when I got out to Napa for a week to work harvest. It’s also that time again, Sober October!

What was I thinking?