The Next Phase

Finally we are done sorting grapes!!!! Staring at the sorting conveyor for hours upon hours was beginning to kill me. We had a really long five-day stretch where we received and processed almost all of the remaining grapes (about 80 tons), which made for an exhausting ten-day period which culminated in me running out of gas on my way home from a 13-hour day because I had been too lazy to get up five minutes earlier and drive out of my way to the gas station. Lesson learned.

Our last grapes - I couldn't be more thrilled

I am the early intern, so I go in at 8:00 every morning to collect samples and analyze each fermenter so that adds can be made before the others roll in at 9:30 and punch down. Punching down serves basically to re-wet the skins which all float to the top in order to prevent them from collecting any unwanted bacteria. It also stirs in the additions that we make, most of which serve to guide the yeast in the direction we want it to go. When I collect samples, they want them to come from beneath the cap because the temperature and sugar levels are more accurate, but that means sticking my entire arm into bins upon bins full of grapes at 8:00 in the morning when it's 40 degrees. By the time I'm done, it looks not unlike I've just birthed a cow.

The ferment room/cellar. Because there are so many
fermentations going on, the room fills with CO2 pretty
quickly and can actually be pretty dangerous.

After the yeast has done its job of converting sugars into alcohol, the wine is separated from the grapes in the press and the bins are set aside to let sediments settle, after which the wine is pumped off of the sediment and stored for over a year for aging.

My samples - drinking wine like it's my job

Among all of this, the cellar has gotten more and more crowded (we're producing almost three times the amount of wine their facility is made for), and we've gained more and more inside jokes. My nicknames have somehow (and somewhat unfortunately) become either Munch - short for Munchkin - or Musty Thigh - which evolved from my My Little Pony whose name was Misty Fly. We recently had a new addition to our team, Pamela, who works at Nike during the week, but is a wine blogger and wanted to get a real experience working a harvest, so she boldly signed up to spend four of her weekends working with us. It's funny how you don't realize how many inside jokes you have until you have to explain them to someone new. We also have a 3:00 dance party, which I take credit for initiating during the first week of harvest. It's not always at 3:00, especially when we were processing because we often didn't have lunch until 3:00 (one day it was at 5:00), but it happens and it's glorious.

My boss Sam dance-partying

Mikey went so far as to make a
poster of me

This week was Canadian Thanksgiving, and considering that my two roommates are Canadian, one of them cooked up a turkey feast on her day off and invited some friends and told everyone to dress Canadian. While most of the attendees wore flannel and denim, my boss Sam dressed as Avril Lavigne (sporting eyeliner for the first time in her life) - and she convinced me to dress as Celine Dion. I was kind of bummed that I hadn't planned ahead more and acquired a ballgown, but I made up for it with insane amounts of bronzer and an entrance that involved me singing the Titanic theme song into my hairbrush microphone. 

Our harvest team (minus Tony)

All things considered, this is a very weird experience time-wise. It flies by, especially the way that our harvest has gone. But because I live and work with the same five people and they're the only people I see, I feel like I've known them for years. Recent talk of ending the harvest has changed the vibe a little, and I have to admit that I'm happy to be moving on, but I'm sad that it's already taking some of the fun out of our day-to-day life.

After all of the dreadful rain, I can't express how nice it is to
a) get a day off, b) see the sun again, and c) find some of
the pretty places around here. This is at Champoeg State
Park along the Willamette River.