Random Notes

So, this is kind of for Sean. The day after he was asking about pictures of my bike and how that was the only thing missing from my blog I posted a picture of me and my bike. I don't think my bike likes the camera because that following week I had not one, not two but three flat tires! Twas the most frustrating experience so far. There are these thorns that grow out in the vineyards that are literally hard as rocks and will flatten a forklift tire as I have heard. Luckily Steve is so nice that he offered me a work truck to take home a few of those days and as you see above this was my chariot that got me to the party Friday night. Riding in style as always. And I had to have a picture with the 760lb pumpkin we have in our tasting room right now. Hope everyone is well and missing me :) Ciao~

Purple hands = Purple smiles

What a crazy week this has been, my time here is really starting to fly by! I have almost been here a month and am finally getting the swing of things. Been working in the tasting room on Saturdays, my real forte! It is fun to talk to people from all over the world, give them tours of the winery and show them what goes on behind the scenes. Everyone seems so fascinated by the process, I feel like a celebrity! One of the chosen few... but there is so much work and careful planning that goes into making wine. One wrong move and you could easily ruin a whole bin/barrel of wine. FYI you can get about 300 bottles of wine (give or take a few) out of a barrel of wine. This past week I also helped out Friday night for a private party that was held at the winery. It was a Taco's, Tequila and Cabernet party (crazy mix). But it was a success, everyone had a blast and the taco's came from the infamous California taco truck's that are everywhere. They were so good I am considering driving one home and setting up outside the wine store on the weekend. :)
As you can see in the pictures above, we are already putting some of our oak barrels into use this early in the game. This is a process called open barrel fermentation. We are crushing into the open barrels and fermenting them with their skins for 50-60 days (called extended maceration) before they will be pressed off and put back into the barrel until they are bottled. This allows for a softer, more plush wine with lots of age ability (due to the high tannins from the skins) and with more of an oak influence. This is the second year Steve and Arturo are doing this as they are very happy with how the 2008's are evolving.
My job this week consists of doing punchdowns and pumpovers of the grapes we have fermenting so far. There are 18 bins, 16 barrels and 5 stainless steel tanks filled with juice, and as I heard yesterday this is only 20% of the harvest! It has been quite a late one this year with more moderate temperatures allowing for a longer hang time on the vine. By the time I leave they will really be needing a second hand. Ciao for now, this one is getting long.

So I thought work had begun...

But I was very confused earlier. See all that was just leading up to and getting ready for when the real work began yesterday. This was my day:
* Arrived at 8:30 am and the guys were already pressing the 4 tons of Sauvignon Blanc we had received on Monday. I helped clean the crusher when it was finished and was almost attacked by a swarm of bees that were upset that I kept spraying them with the hose! They are all over the crusher when we are pressing.
* Set up the crusher/destemmer in the front of the winery for the 16 tons of Cab/Syrah/Pinot Noir we were receiving today. Steve Reynolds is going to experiment with open barrel fermentation this year for his special wine club member bottle and so we were crushing right into the barrel as you see above. They aren't sealed after that, just covered with the lid and saran wrap. You will get more of an oak presence in these wines as they are exposed during the first of the fermentation.
* Quick lunch at 12:30 then the party was on! We had to open up and pressure wash 16 oak barrels that we would be using today. Kind of a deconstructing cooperage job. Grapes started to arrive and didn't stop until around 3:30pm. Usually we like to get our grapes earlier in the day but as this heat kind of snuck up on us we had to react quickly to make sure the grape sugar levels didn't go crazy. So we were using dry ice all day as you see in the picture above. That was a bin of Pinot Noir we just crushed.
* I was all over the place yesterday, helping with the crushing, wrapping barrels in the cellar room and just an extra hand wherever they needed me. Don't know if I mentioned it but they have taught me how to operate a forklift and this is slowly becoming one of my favorite things to do at the winery. There will eventually be a post about my new found love for forklifts.
* When the day ended around 8pm we had filled 12 oak barrels, 6 bins and two stainless fermentation tanks of grapes. I was literally covered from head to toe in grape juice. I got home, took a shower and was asleep by 9:15! All in a day's work, and I LOVE IT. Ciao~

Spider Monkey

You must be quite confused with the title of this blog but I can explain. See, this was my job description on Thursday and Friday of this past week. Imagine that you are 30 feet in the air, climbing between oak barrels with a wine pump in one hand and sweeping away the cobwebs with the other. And the only light in the room comes from one skylight and the headlamp you have on. I wasn't imagining these things, I was doing just that. Every six weeks all of the barrels in the cellar room have to be topped off with wine. There are a few cups that evaporate out of the barrels during that time and it is best to keep them full with the least amount of air contact. At first I was excited about the challenge as climbing to great heights aren't one of my favorite pastimes. But as the day went on and I climbed higher and higher and the barrels started to wobble back and fro, the excitement wore off and I was just plain scared! But as time went on, I realized that I wasn't going to fall, that I was wedged in between the barrels and was safer than I first let myself believe. Nearing the end of my task, I honestly was sad that my days as a spider monkey were coming to an end. I ended up really liking the job and only pushed myself as far as my brain would let me. As you can see in the pictures, there was no way I was going to get on the very top barrels and fill those so I left those to the professional. P.S I didn't include any pictures of me climbing for fear that my mother would have a conniption. She really hates heights! Ciao~

Who needs a car

When you have perfectly good legs that can peddle your happy a** anywhere you want? Well that is what I tell myself every time I get on my bike to literally take my happy behind anywhere. I have grown a new appreciation for the convenience of having a car. But I must say that this area is very biker friendly :) There are bike lanes on almost every street and drivers are very aware of the biking scene around here. The ride is about six miles each way (downhill in the morning and then uphill the whole way home) and for the most part I really love it. Gives me a chance to enjoy the view of endless grape vines and mountains in the distance. And, as you see above, an occasional hot air balloon! It is a refreshing ride in the morning, usually quite cool. I start out wearing four layers of clothing to slowly peel off during the day as it has lately been warming up well into the 90's. If fact the next week it will get into the 100's and cool down to 55 at night. Just when the craziness begins...

Crushing 101

Yesterday (Tuesday) we crushed the Chardonnay that sat overnight in the cellar room. Crushing, like destemming, is done using gravity flow. The wine falls into the crusher and depending on the grape type, goes through a series of stages to release all the juice from the grapes. As most whites are only crushed once and the skins are then thrown away, they go through a longer process of crushing than reds. Red wines continue to sit on their skins and extract color and flavor while the whites are a one time deal. So the Chardonnay is fed into the crusher and whala, dirty wine as you will see in the pictures! You still get a few seeds and other debris that make it through the tiny holes in the crusher so there will be a series of rackings and filtration to make this dirty wine nice and clean. After almost two hours the crushing is finished and the grapes come out looking like smooshed raisins. They have almost no flavor or juice left at all, trust me I tried. The juice is pumped into a tank and left overnight again to settle. Racking is when you take the top layer of juice from the tank and pump it into another tank leaving most of the dirty part of the wine behind. That will be done for the Chardonnay tomorrow. Hope all is well this week, weather is still beautiful everyday. High of 85 and low of 55 most days and usually not a cloud in the sky. And the dog was spotted at a local coffee shop this weekend. His name is Tiger Woods of Napa and apparently has a website! Ciao~

The fun begins!

Grapes finally started arriving Monday morning; 1.5 tons of Chardonnay, 2 tons of Cabernet and 3 tons of Syrah. Since this would be the only day we were getting any grapes this week, time was on our side. We decided to hand sort the Chardonnay, which came in with alot of bird damage and noble rot. Steve likes to keep some of the "raisinated" grapes in the mix with the perfectly ripe grapes as they really intensify the flavors so our job was slightly easier. The Chardonnay was to sit overnight in the cellar room so we added an enzyme to start breaking down the skins to add more flavor when we crush then Tuesday. After that was finished, it was time to de-stem all of the reds. The destemmer works like this; grapes go into the auguer (the metal bin up high) and then all down into the destemmer. Most of the large stems are removed and as you can see in the pictures below, the other little stems are fished out as the grapes settle into the bins. You can either crush the grapes after they are destemmed or you can let them sit in the bins for a few days with another type of enzyme to extract color from the skins and some sulfur to keep them from oxidizing. Again, as we have the time, we are letting them sit for a few days. This batch of grapes came from an area of California that isn't known for growing grapes. In fact this is the first commercial vineyard in Walnut Creek and Steve Reynolds has decided to help make the wine for the guy who owns the vineyard. If you see any wine in the market from Kalkoven Vineyards, that's the wine I've been stompin! Hope everyone had a great weekend. I went into the city Sunday to see the Dodgers and Giants (Giants won 7-2) and to eat some Thai food. Ciao~