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The Week in Review
It has been quite a week of work. I returned to the winery (in Napa - follow me on this one) on Tuesday. I am working part time at a winery in Napa (it is called Larkmead) and full-time at a winery in Sonoma (DuMOL). So, on Tuesday I returned to Larkmead to finish some of our 'racking' (clarifying) of wine. It was just me and the Cellar Master. A young kid, a couple of years and some younger than me. And with a significant year or so more experience in the wine trade than me. But we get along real well and he is a great teacher - imparting the logistics along with the philosophy with great enthusiasm. I look forward to working with him more. However, he is in a troubled state. He spent three months working at a winery in New Zealand and when he returned, his fiance had told him that she valued her independence when he was gone and she called off their engagement. So, one minute he is vivacious and fun to be around, the next he is pushing his lunch across the table and saying he can't eat anything, anymore. The break up has been hard on him, he has a basketball sized broken heart, but more than less, he manages it well. I look forward to getting to know him between bouts of self-loathing and doubt. From Wednesday to Friday, my alarm on my cellphone was battling the roosters. We were at the vineyards (we source/buy grapes from 20-odd 'blocks' of vines at 10 or more different sites throughout Sonoma). Each day started cold and damp. Fog had set upon the vines like the mist from a scary movie that is ever present and surrounding a haunted, black mansion on a hill. By 10:30 a.m., to the second, the sun had dried the land and the condensation on the grapes came not from the morning mist but from the sweat of our skin. We worked laboriously for ten hours or more, our necks red, our hands purple and our backs prematurely bent. Acres and acres, rows and rows of green canopies covering tightly-wound clusters of grapes. Our hands reaching in, wooden shafts scratching our knuckles, to unwind a few berries whose skin is so thin that when they burst their sugary insides make our hands stick to our pants and shirts and the citric acids begins to eat away at our cuticles. But we are growing better wine. Without good grapes, you cannot make great wine. Repeat. Daily. So we find the fragile few, the green berries that haven't ripened and the clusters that are not clusters at all but loosely strung sponge like marbles and we drop them to the ground. Ten percent of fruit that we leave behind, beneath our feet for the birds and the rabbits and the animals of prey, will allow us to make twenty percent better wine. We leave more than 10% of grapes on the ground, because with the concentration of good grapes, those that survive the growing season to our standards will be dense and full of flavor and please our palates in the weeks and months to come. I learned a great many things in just three long days about how to grow the vines in pretty trestled rows of green and how to find the grapes that have not fulfilled their annual pursuit of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. When hours pass, the body acts without thinking. It is a therapeutic exercise when you go down the line. Seeing and acting without thinking. Your mind loses time and on occasion you start to think of relatively important things like it only rains for three months in most vineyard laden areas. And the vines don't thrive when they have a mouthful or more of water to protect them from the scorching sun. They only get bloated and tasteless. Masking the sugars that will turn into alcoholic grape juice. Diluting the DNA of the grapes that project the rich, forest berry flavors and rose petal, violet, vanilla and chocolate aromas. And then I think of distant lands that don't have fresh water and how Bono and Bill Gates and Al Gore rally to send airplanes full of water to places on the African continent. (And I think that most clusters of grapes look geographically like the continent of Africa.) I ask, why can't these men rally to figure out how we can rub two hydrogen atoms and some oxygen together in drought debilitated neighborhoods instead of wasting other natural resources in transporting water? Then I think about my dirty hands and the free flow of faucet water and the soap dispenser sitting on my bathroom sink. And I am awoken from thought by the call for lunch. Six hours passed and all I have eaten is a few berries from the bunches. But I am not hungry and I know a sit under a tree eating a sandwich and crispy potato chips from a oxygen sealed bag will only tire me for the rest of the afternoon's work. But we have the best views of any employee cafeteria this side of the Conde Nast building. We work until the day is done and we get in our cars and go to my boss' backyard and drink a cold beer. Each day the price of beer goes up. As we are passing through the rows, my South African colleague asks, when the sun is overhead and we are completely overheated, how much would I pay for a cold beer right now? However, today it wasn't so hot, so the price was less than the $15 dollars it was the day before. Fueled daily with the enthusiasm of a job well done, on Tuesday night I convened with some new friends for a game of poker. The game kicks off after a celebratory BBQ. Celebratory because it is the duty of the previous week's winner to buy the sustenance and prepare the food. This week it was hamburgers with avocado slices and all the other green and red condiments typical of grilled meat between two pieces of plump, Pac Man like buns, baked beans, salad with watermelon and roasted corn on the cob. Next week, I am sure it will be just as satisfying. I didn't win this week, so I can only wait to find out. And I didn't lose, so I was not responsible for cleaning up. On Wednesday night, with little sleep from the previous evening's poker playing, I fell asleep after closing my eyes, for what I told myself would be just a minute or two. It was 8 p.m. when I did and past midnight when I rose from the couch to shut the light and return to sleep. Thursday evening was another BBQ, this time on the patio of Lynmar Winery. The attendees were local winemakers and the event was the monthly 'tasting group.' Like a book group that will turn to interesting pages dog-eared by its participants, everyone is to bring a bottle of interesting wine or two that is uncorked around platters of toasted breads and cheeses while we gas up the grill. We drank many wonderful wines from our own vineyard (DuMOL) - and Lynmar and Dehlinger and Kosta Brown and the list of prominent producers goes on. We shoved our noses in the glasses, took a sip, sloshed the wine in our mouth and swallowed the stuff (no spitting here this evening is the last scheduled tasting before the true harvest begins) and we asked each other what they thought of his Chardonnay or that Pinot Noir or this Syrah and that Gerwurtraminer. It was glorious. And good eating. Friday, we finished our day's vineyard work, an hour later than the days before and we went to a local, liberal pub in Sebastopol - the capital of liberal America. There was a band, jamming in its hippy glory. Girls dancing, bras optional, arms and bodies slowly moving as if the dancers were wading in water; there was a threesome on the patio playing with small bean bags - juggling and passing the balls to one another via a triangular bandanna clutched in their hands and clenched in their teeth; there was a small, stone wagon wheel converted into a fountain in the middle of the patio; there was a black man wearing a double breasted suit and holding a golf club practicing his putting stroke on an artificial surface; there was a cowboy with a long black leather jacket that looked like it was made of plastic and would crack if he moved his arms any faster as he lifted a clear colored drink to his lips; there were waitresses wearing aprons outfitted with a Snoopy print around their stomachs; there was a man behind a metal bar who was cooking food on a grill; there was a man in a worn, red velvet cape with a Japanese bird imprinted on it - he was the center of the local ladies' attention; and there was us, four of us, sitting at a wooden table drinking our beers which only cost $4. My first week is finished and I am satisfied and excited about the weeks to come. It has come and gone with wine in barrels and grapes on vines. It happened so fast that I have forgotten that it is nearing the end of summer, but from what I can imagine the life out here is never without summer. Never without sun and BBQ's and people gathering outside to talk and to eat and to drink and to enjoy each other's company. It is a special place and it gives me a special feeling. A feeling of anticipation and excitement like a man on an island waiting for a message in a bottle. And upon seeing its arrival, the bottle is filled with wine and when he drinks it, he will forget about Bono and Bill Gates and the political system and he will smile a purple tooth grin.
Post - September'06 Back to home...
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