Day Four: Lab Monkey

I should preface this post with a disclaimer--to cover my own ass, sure, but also to inform You, The Reader, about the nature of trade secrets in winemaking. When I showed up for training, I signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) saying that I wouldn't divulge details of how Williams Selyem makes their wines. This covers the obvious stuff, like detailed notes about our crush/ferment processes, but it also includes (I'm assuming) detailed laboratory results. Aside from the NDA, I'm also pretty sure that nobody reading this blog really cares that certain barrels of X wine are running hot (overly alcoholic), or that another wine is overly sulfurous. So I just won't include that stuff. Instead, I'll use broad strokes. For example: "The Zins are looking great!" If that, even.

That said, I'll pick up where Day Three's post left off. In the words of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth:

Figure 1. "Good news, everyone! Gordon's been designated as the

enologist's assistant for the remainder of his internship!"

So, what exactly does the Professor mean by this? He means to say that I'll be in the laboratory for most of my time here. From what I understand, I'll also get some exposure to the other duties during/after harvest, but it won't be nearly as extensive as my lab work. This means that I'll get a solid, comprehensive winemaking education: everything from cleaning to equipment setup and operation to grape crushing to fermentation to barreling to laboratory analysis. Damn near everything, really. Which is exactly what I was looking for when I took this internship. In a word: cool.

This setup also means that I'll be set up in Williams Selyem's brand spankin' new facility, just down the road from their winery. The new place (located at their Estate vineyard) is damn swanky, designed to host visitors and events, as well as to cellar and bottle wines. It also has a kick-ass new laboratory, which I will be working in. Today, in that swanky laboratory, I learned how to do a lot of things. The interim enologist (wine scientist), Patrick, taught me how to test for alcohol, sulfur, and volatile acids. Remember when you were taking General Chemistry Lab back in college, and you contracted a serious case of the grumbles from all those goddamn titrations? Remember how you bitched about it and asked when the hell you'd ever titrate out in The Real World? Well, guess what, folks. Enology is a shitload of titration.

Wanna know the sulfur content? Titrate some samples!

Wanna know the volatile acid content? Titrate some samples!

Wanna know the alcohol content? You know the drill.

Actually, wait. For alcohol content, you just let a sample run through the Alcolyzer. It takes like 45 seconds.

For anybody who's ever suffered through General Chemistry Lab, let me reassure you: titration is incredibly important in The Real World. Maybe you won't have to do it in whatever field you go into, but whenever you enjoy a glass of wine, remember that titration was a key step in the quality assurance of that nectar.

But it's not as if enologists only run titrations. They do bad-ass things like retrieve samples from barrels. Not bad-ass, you say? Have you ever seen a barrel room at a winery? Or a cave? Here, let me refresh your memory:

Figure 2. A barrel room. Notice how tall the man in the background

is, compared to the barrels.

How, then, is taking samples bad-ass? Well, since OSHA could potentially read his post, I'll put it this way: we TOTALLY use ladders. Got it? LADDERS. If, however, someone were to not use a ladder, though, I bet a few years of rock climbing experience would come in pretty handy. Just sayin'. I bet it would.

In all seriousness, though, I wouldn't do anything that I wasn't comfortable with, or that I felt was unnecessarily dangerous. Neither I, nor the winery, nor any of my loved ones, would want me to do so. I like the direction my life's headed, so I don't want it to end prematurely. And besides, the smell of the barrel rooms is incredible. The smell of new French oak is a lovely bouquet of vanilla and wood; add to that the aromas of the wines when you remove samples, and you've got a room that will motivate you to stay alive for, just to smell it again. It's intoxicating, I believe one could say.

Anywho, that's Day Four. Presumably, that's also much of the rest of my Days, too. I guess after this post, I may want to abandon that system of nomenclature. We'll see, though. On second thought, tomorrow's post might get a special title anyway. Tomorrow, we're tasting the entire 2008 line, then having a staff BBQ. I foresee epic taste bud shock. Perhaps even a mild religious experience. Rest assured, though: if I see God in a Pinot, I'll report it here.