Interlude: Half-Way There

I apologize for the sparse posts, but when I have time to myself, I elect to spend it sleeping or eating. There's not much time or energy for anything else. The rumors are true, folks. Harvest is an all-consuming experience.

Just to say that I've posted more than one post in the month of Octobere two scenes from the winery these days.

Figure 1. [video removed] The Williams Seylem Harvest Crew supports their

winemaker, Phil, by performing their new theme fr digging tanks:

"Diggin' on a Prayer

Figure 2. My employee allocation: 12 bottles, discounted 50%.

Figure 3. The mix-'n-mingle part of the 2010 Harvest Party for winery

employees, growers, and guests. Location: the brand new Estate facility.

Figure 4. A gigantic live oak growing over/around a boulder, as seen

on the walk to the patio, where we had our fabulous meal.

Figure 5. A magnum of '93 Allen. It was excellent. Still had plenty

of good fruit (ripe red berries), but awesome depth and complexity

from the extended aging. There's still plenty of life left in that wine.

Figure 6. The 6L bottle signed by the Williams Selyem staff, presented

to the evening's guests of honor, Burt and Jan Williams. Seeing as the

winery wouldn't exist today without the key support in the 80s from

vineyard owner Joe Rochioli, the bottle is appropriately full of 2007 (an

outstanding vintage) Rochioli Riverblock.

Figure 7. The gorgeous engraving of the brand new Estate facility.

Top signatures are those of the Dysons (winery owners), and

Bob Cabral, executive winemaker.

Figure 8. The view from my seat at the dinner table: Estate vineyards.

Figure 9. Left to right: magnums of 2004 Bacigalupi Zinfandel

and 1993 Allen Pinot noir. Yum.

Figure 10. Fancy menu.

Figure 11. A stunningly vibrant bottle, considering its age. The 1998 Hirsch

(seriously Sonoma Coast) tasted so young that it could have passed for a 2008.

Figure 12. The Heavyweights' table. Visible: Burt Williams (left, facing right),

John Dyson (blue shirt, far end of table). Behind the waitress: Joe Rochioli.

Figure 13. A glass of 2006 late harvest gewurztraminer. Incredible with

(or as) dessert, it tasted like honeyed figs sprinkled with roasted nuts.

Figure 14. The view from the Estate's patio, facing south.

Figure 15. Another view of the gnarly live oak, with the Estate

building behind it.

Figure 16. Estate vineyard, facing east.

Figure 17. Newly planted vines in the Estate vineyard, facing southwest.

Figure 18. I took more liberties with the label maker, branding

the ferm container with a name stripped from a painfully 80s pop band.

Culture Club: An Update

In case you were wondering and hadn't already noticed, harvest is very time consuming. Just exactly how time consuming is harvest? My last paycheck was for 115 hours over a period of two weeks, during which I had a single day off. Some days were shorter than others, but the longest ones were about 12 hours. At a winery, that's pretty rough.

My schedule now goes something like this: wake up at 5:30; be at the winery and working by 7:00; spend the morning inoculating tanks and building yeast/malolactic cultures; break for lunch and whackbat at noon; work in the laboratory or build more cultures as needed, until 5 or 6. The lab work isn't nearly as exhausting as the culture stuff, since lab work doesn't involve running around with 5-gallon buckets of juice/wine for five hours at a time. The lab drains a person in its own special ways, though, such as running enzymatic analysis (post-press malic acid and residual sugar content) on 25+ samples at the same time, in a room that's between 80 and 85 degrees.

All the work is paying off, however. At the end of this week, we'll be between 85 and 90 percent through with crushing fruit. All the Russian River Pinot is in, as is much of the Chardonnay. Most of the Sonoma Coast Pinot is in. All the Central Coast Pinot is in. All we're waiting on at this point is some Russian River Chard, the port varietals, and the tiny quantity of Zin that we're getting this year (all of 4 tons, from what I hear). It's been a brutal vintage for Zinfandel here. The severe cold-weather pruning left the grapes exposed and vulnerable to sunburn and raisining during the heat spike, resulting in massive crop losses. Being the sticklers for quality that Williams Seylem are, this translates to tiny (or no) shipments of high quality grapes from affected vineyards.

Whenever the rest of the grapes come in, though, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Fruit comes in on Day Zero, gets crushed on Day One, cold soaks in its own juice until Day Five, and is then inoculated (by yours truly... mostly) with yeast from a culture that was grown on Day Three. When it's almost done fermenting, I pitch in a malolactic bacteria culture (prepared when fermentation really gets cookin'). And speaking of fermentations, check this out:

Figure 1. A fermentation tank with some very happy yeast.

There's plenty of wine underneath the cap, which is itself a good

eight or twelve inches below the layer of foamy goodness.

In other news, today was Headband Day at the winery. The trend, started by intern John, has become an official weekly event. Of course, being a cog in a well-oiled machine such as Williams Selyem's harvest crew, I had to participate.

Figure 2. Headband made of blue masking tape. Also notice

the 7am glaze over the eyes, the need-another-day-off bags

underneath them.

Hopefully my senses will return to me when things slow down after crush, when the daily routine becomes more about monitoring malic acid, VA, and sulfur levels in the newly vinted/barreled wines--as opposed to hauling two 50-pound buckets o' juice around for hours on end. Senses will be key for that work, as it will involve much barrel climbing, something you should never do with anything less than a sound mind. Much like handling blue masking tape, which should never be handled by a sleep deprived man on Headband Day.

Ever.