Week Two Round-Up

So much for the daily posts. For the time being, anyway. To be honest, there's only so much preparation a winery can do before fruit arrives. Is all the equipment cleaned? Yup. Are the crush pad, barrel rooms, and cellar cleaned? Affirmative. Are the monthly barrel analyses on last vintage's wines completed? They are. Has the juice for the sparkling wine been analyzed, and have the crushed grapes been disposed of properly? Yes to both.

Oh, that reminds me: We crushed our first batch of fruit this week!

It was exciting to see our first grapes come in, on Tuesday I think it was. About 6 tons of Pinot noir, for use as a sparkling wine base. We gently pressed the grapes, then transferred the juice into a chilled tank, so that there would be no skin contact. (Remember, we want a sparkling white wine from these grapes, a blanc de noir. Skin contact would make it pink.) The juice will stay in the tank, undergo fermentation (we will inoculate it with yeast), and then send it to a small operation in the area that specializes in secondary fermentations, since we just don't have the equipment for that type of stuff. They will take our wine, bottle it with added sugar and yeast, monitor it throughout its fermentation (as a little more alcohol and a lot of carbon dioxide are produced), and then finish it off by removing the yeast/sediment and plugging the bottle with a cork. In the end, we get this back:

Figure 1. Williams Selyem blanc de noir. It's delicious.

I should mention, though, that when I say that "we" pressed the grapes, and then "we" transferred the juice, what I really mean is: "the other interns" pressed the grapes, then "the other interns" transferred the juice. I was busy in the lab running analyses on the vineyard samples. Hey, how else will Bob know when to call in the fruit-picking army? Those acid and sugar levels don't reveal themselves without the help of a lab monkey. I'm not too jealous of the crush crew, though. Sure, they get to play with the fruit, moving, sorting, crushing, and (on the sly) tasting, but I'll get my chance. Right now, I've got to make sure the numbers are satisfactory. And as the grapes race toward the finish line of ripeness at the blazing speed of a stoned tortoise, my job is becoming very important. Vineyard samples will start coming in more frequently in the next week and a half, which means more to do. Exciting times!

On the social scene, the interns have definitely been gelling as a group and as a team. Apparently, this doesn't always happen. Some of my coworkers were recalling brutal harvest seasons, working with people who didn't get along, didn't want to get along, and were generally unpleasant people. I'm very glad that the 2010 Williams Selyem crew is nothing like that. When, at the end of a long day, you can all go hang out at someone's house and down some beers, sip some wine, listen to some music, and just chill, that's a pretty good group to be working with. Apparently, the early-arriving (June) interns found a place up in Dry Creek Valley (land o' great Zin), about 20 or minutes from the winery, called the Dry Creek General Store. It's a nice little shop, with a very Puckett's-esque restaurant inside. And, most importatly, it has a bar. But not just "a bar". The bar (that is, the long wooden installation on which brewskies are served) is fuckin' old. The DCGS bar is still the original, sitting in that location since pre-Civil War days. Just imagine the things that bar as seen. Imagine how many bets have been made, won, and lost there. Imagine how many wine industry deals have gone down there. The fights. The deaths. The conceptions, or perhaps even the births. Here, check this place out:

Figure 2. The DCGS. The bar is on the far left.

You know what the real appeal is, though, to a Tennessee native? Barbecue. Excellent barbecue. On Thursdays, they have all-you-can-eat barbecue, cooked right in front of the bar. It. Is. Glorious. Their wet-style ribs are just as good as any I've had in any part of the South. Really great stuff, especially after a long day at a winery. I think this will become a staple of Thursdays. It's too good to pass up.

So that was Week Two, in a nutshell. Due to all the cleaning being done, and the grapes being not yet ready for picking, the winery has resorted to scheduling interns. I have today and Tuesday off, and am on call Wednesday. That translates to a 4- or potentially 5-day weekend. I'm exhausted, though, so I'm just going to hang around here, I think. Lots of ready to do. And resting up for the coming insanity is a good idea, too. We'll see what happens.