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.