The 80 Hour Work Week

"Today was the first day that actually felt like harvest", Jordan said this evening- 7pm, sun setting sleepily into a crisp evening, beer in hand, lounging back in a little rolly chair in Tony's office/lab/break room off of the cellar. 12 hours- our longest shift so far.

We sorted six tons of pinot, transfered a tank of wine into barrels for storage, drained two tanks of juice off of their skins, transfered them to another tank, and then (this is my favorite part) jumped into the "empty" tanks with a shovel and shoveled out the remaining grape skins. But the layer of skins is about three feet deep, heavy, and compresses the more you stand around on top of them. And the fermentation process released CO2, which is thick and strong smelling and poisonous, and which lingers in the tank and gets trapped in the skins- and released into your face as you shovel them out. A few days ago, Kyle- the new guy- cued up some hair metal on our shoddy make-shift sound system, took his shoes off, and jumped into a tank and went absolutely balistic on it until it was empty- which took all of 12 minutes. It took me 25 minutes today.

We then pressed off the skins- which involves another full-immersion cleaning experience in the Press- a mazzive rotating stainless steel cylinder with an expanding bladder inside it that squeezes every last drop of liquid out of the parched and flakey grape skins. We did our morning and evening punchdowns (mixing the fermentation tanks to keep the grape skins in contact with the juice- they get pushed up the the top of the tank by the CO2 gas coming from the fermentation, and form a cap which is so strong you can walk on it). And then cleaned everything until it sparkled. "Welcome", said Jordan on our first day. "Work a harvest, learn how to be a janitor".

Then comes my favorite part of the day, driving the old, super broken down Ford dumptruck to the compost pile to dump all of the stems and pummace from the day. This truck is so trashed it's insane. I think it's Jordan's and works well enough for him. But the battery drains so bad that we have to disconnect it any time we're not driving it, the driver's side door doesn't have a doorhandle so you have to reach outside the window to let yourself out- or climb out the window when even that doesn't work. The radio flicks on and off randomly when you're driving. The upholstery is so worn that the entire interior of the truck is basically reduced to sawdust and chipping plastic. And the windshield is so thick with dirt that if the sun catches it wrong, you're completely blinded and have to stick your head out of the window or, as I usually do, just keep going and trust you'll be fine. For some reason, the thought of dragging a hose over and washing the windshield seems like sacrilege, although that would probably be a pretty logical thing to do.

Henry grabbed a beer out of the cooler as I popped the hood and reconnected the battery, and we drove up the gravel washboard road through the rolling vineyard and to the compost pile, beer bottle between my legs, stalling several times and laughing with exhaustion. And from the compost pile, climbing on top of the mound of sticky grape stems and yellowjackets, a pregnant half moon could be seen hanging in a glowing blue newly-night sky.

Just Another Day in Paradise

Hazing

Today was a slow day. We didn't have much to do- so we spent most of the day finding things to clean and taking a long time doing it. One of the highlights of our cleaning frenzy was cleaning "the press"- a huge machine that you feed grapes into that presses the juice out and leaves the grape skins and sediment behind. Grapes go into a hopper on top via forklift and the grapes fall into a cylindrical chamber that holds 10 tons of grapes, the whole chamber spins, juice is fed out of the machine and the skins are left inside it- at which point one of us "cellar rats" has to climb inside of the press (through a little porthole in the bottom) and shovel the grape skins out. But fermenting grapes, which is what we're doing here, releases a tremendous amount of CO2 gas- which is kind of poisonous- and going into confined spaces, full of CO2 gas, and doing physical work is potentially dangerous (we use the buddy system, don't worry) and something that we will all get ample practice in apparently. (There are a few other situations, imperative to winery operation, that involve CO2 gas, confined spaces, temporary employees and shovels).

So today, we just cleaned the whole thing in preparation for using it. Which involved all four of us climbing through the little port hole in the bottom of the machine wearing headlamps, coal miner style, and crouching in the dark damp stainless steel chamber as Jordan showed us all the different valves, grooves and traps that need extensive cleaning. One of the tools that is used to clean under the seams of the bladder that lines half of the machine, looks like an Ascheulean hand axe. Crouching in the dripping cave, our faces dimly lit by each others headlamps, holding Ascheulean hand axes, I felt as if we should be butchering an antelope carcass. But no, we lowered ourselves one by one, back onto the winery warehouse floor, Jordan's horrible music still beating on from the radio perched halfway down the first row of tanks. He apparently bought his iPod used and the last user didn't bother to erase his music before giving it to Jordan and Jordan never bothered to replace it with his own. Or so he claims. It's very possible that he just has very bad taste in music. It mainly consists of terrible remixes of already very mediocre pop. Anyway, we emerged from the chamber unscathed.

I was the one however, who they sent back up- clad in rubber boots and a camoflage rain jacket- in the chamber with a hose to wash out all the chemical we sprayed up into it. The hot water from the hose fills the cave with hot steam and it starts to feel like a sweat lodge, sound from outside dampened, echoey and dripping. Anyway, this is what I deemed as hazing. Although secretly, it was kind of relaxing.

The next instance of hazing was much more outright. With all of the tasks at hand occupied, I was kind of puttering around the warehouse in a post-lunch digestion haze, hosing things off and tightening things with wrenches, when Jordan had the idea of having me clean the skylights.... These are skylights on the ceiling of the warehouse- two stories high. I thought he was kidding.

But sure enough, he dashed outside and came back a little while later with the forklift. In it's forking grip was a plastic bin- one of the ones we transport grapes in- and in that, a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. I hopped into the bin and, reminiscent of a hot air balloon ride I did a few years ago, but much less varafiably safe or at all legal, the forklift slowly rose me up two stories where I washed the skylights and weathered playful abuse as to how they were going to "dump me" if I didnt do a thorough enough job.

Tomorrow- back to real work. Whew!

Micro-wave Cobbler

The bushes lining the quarter-mile driveway to my house are covered in blackberries- the baking potential is so tempting! But my kitchen consists of a mini-fridge, a micro-wave and a rice cooker.

So I made a (very delicious!) blackberry cobbler in the micro-wave. This was the second attempt. The first attempt made the micro-wave smoke and somehow made blackberries, sugar, butter and flour smell like burning truck brakes and it came out looking like a clif bar that had been sitting out in the sun for a week. But luckily the micro-wave did NOT explode, because the second attempt came out fantastic.

I now have big plans for the next few gourmet desserts I plan to make with, yes you guys got it, a mini-fridge, a micro-wave and a rice cooker. Stay tuned. This is bound to get interesting!

Day Off

Today, I only worked a half day and tomorrow I have off. Which I wasn't expecting- nobody I think was expecting this weekend off. And I'm not sure what to do with myself. I've been enjoying the immersion and the simplicity of not having to think about what I'm doing. I wake up, eat breakfast and read a chapter of my book, bundle up for an absolutely freezing scooter ride to work, defrost while drinking coffee in the office, and then work and work and work and work until I go home at night, shower, wash the sticky grape residue out of my hair and inspect my newly acquired bruises, eat, read, and then go to sleep. Perfect. That schedule allows me no time to consider my life, think about the fact that, on so many levels, I am deeply homesick, and entertain any number of the plethora of fears I have about going in the wrong direction, losing people who are important to me, not being capable of being who I want to be, living the kind of life I want to live. One thing that I was/am hoping for these next two months to do for me, is provide a little cocoon to heal- to completely occupy myself so that when I emerge again, maybe I'll wake finding myself a little more mended and a little less confused.

This cocoon was beautifully intact until it came to my off day-and-a-half. Having an off-day means having to decide what the hell to do with myself. And then expecting to enjoy myself all the while. Well right now in my vacuous life, that's a bit much.

So I went home, saturated my pillow with tears, and woke up half an hour later feeling empty, but very calm. And with a very clear and resolute feeling of who I am, where I am, and how I connect to the world. Everything has been very stripped bare for me in the last few months. Things are getting more and more simple as slowly, I am throwing out more and more. I've now thrown out so much that I am completely alone and naked in the world. But actually, that doesn't sound half bad. And everything that is important to me is in my blood. My family, very simple sensations, smells, associations. These are things that I can't get rid of even if I tried. And they form a pretty damn good base. From that base, it's okay to be devastastingly sad. And it's okay to be scared. Because I know that I have with me everything I need.

Grape.

I dreamt last night, over and over, the same monotonous kind of background that certain pestering dreams take on, about punch downs- the process of mixing the massive fermentation tanks filled with grapes- soon to be wine- with a heavy hydraulic machine that hangs from the ceiling of the warehouse. I dreamt about cleaning the heavy juice of smashed grapes off of the sides of the tanks, hosing it off the floor. And mostly, I dreamt about the sticky goo of crushed grape parts and wriggling earwigs that we have to clean out of the filter of the sorting conveyor with our hands. I had to remind myself over and over that there were no earwigs in my bed.

I bought a pack of gum- there was "berry" and "mint"- I chose "berry" and guess what flavor it is? Grape.

This is full immersion.

Sorting Grapes- The New Daily Grind

Today, we sorted grapes. Here's what that means: grapes come into the warehouse (or in this case out back of the warehouse) in half ton heavy plastic bins. On a forklift, a bin is hauled around and dumped into a metal hopper on the side of a conveyor belt. We stand alongside the conveyor belt sorting through the grapes and picking out leaves, grasshoppers, twigs, moldy bunches, unripe bunches, and pieces of whatever the harvesters had for lunch that day- today was pistachios. The grapes come to us in tight bunches, the grapes so ripe and sweet they look like blueberries. Another thing that comes with the grapes is earwigs. Lots and lots and lots of earwigs. It took about five minutes to get completely desensitized to them. We stand around the table sorting through the grapes in the sun (under goofy "Torres Vineyard" red and yellow striped umbrellas that make a wine-making operation look like a hot dog stand) sticky with juice, grapes strewn everywhere, earwigs crawling around our clothes and up our arms. Yesterday, I told Henry I'd give him three bucks if he ate an earwig. "Five bucks" he said. "Five for two, three for one". And he grabbed two fat ones and popped them in his mouth without blinking. I still owe him five bucks. After that, he made five bucks again for the guy who missed it and wanted to see him eat earwigs. And then after that, for whatever reason, nobody was paying him anymore, he kept eating them. Every once in a while, when he'd see an earwig on the conveyor belt, he'd grab it and say "Wow, that's a fat one!" and pop it into his mouth.

Anyway, after the grapes go past us on the conveyor belt, they're dumped into a machine that perfectly and mysteriously knocks the grapes off of the stems, spits out grapes on one side and stems on the other. The whole time we're sorting, we're also forklifting new bins of grapes, emptying buckets of juice, pouring dry ice over grapes to preserve them until the go into the fermentation tanks later that day and to kick off the fermentation by adding CO2, dumping bins of compost into the back of a super ghetto pickup which we later take up a hill and dump into a compost heap, cleaning parts of the machine that collect grape scum, skins and earwigs, hosing things off, all the while, telling the most distasteful jokes and puns, the kind of jokes that are only funny after a few hours of standing under the sun doing manual labor with a group of guys in their twenties. Really really nasty jokes.

I learned how to drive a forklift and then to dump and stack bins of grapes with it- which is like learning how to heard cattle riding a hummingbird. Super fun. After the day was mostly over, I got my driving lesson and then spent ten minutes lining myself up with a stack of bins, hoisting the new bin up, fumbling with the controls, dumping the bin when I hoped to raise it, tilting it up, tilting it back down again overcorrecting, tried to come in a little closer, stalled it, turned it back on, and then ever so carefully lowered the bin onto the 12 foot stack and nudged it into place. I slowly, carefully pulled out and then turned around to my posse clapping, after having suspensfully watched the whole process.

Same tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that. I was told I could expect 20 to 30 days of work without a weekend. I think this last sunday was my last day off in a while.

My Country Cottage

Did I mention how much I love my cottage?
Who needs running water or a stove anyway?

My landlady/ the lady whose backyard I'm squatting in, is Nancy. She's very nice, accomodating and helpful. But there's a weird kind of pagan vibe she has going on. She's just operating on a different frequency. She rents out rooms of her big beautiful antique-y country house (colored tile, clawfoot bath, wood-fired oven, flowers on the windowsill type house), has a lesbian couple who park their RV in her driveway to set up shop for little stints of time here and there (their country get-away from the city). There are several strange little structures on her property, mine being one of them. Next to me, there's a mostly dirty-windowed decrepid old structure that once use to be maybe a greenhouse...? I wandered in there the other day to deposit some empty boxes that she said I could store in there until I needed them again, and set them down on the straw floor next to a little bowl of kitty food- for kitties is her intention I'm sure although I'd assume that's what also attracts the family of raccoons that scurries around on my roof at night and knocks around on the shelf of rusted vases, tin boxes, threadbare rugs and wicker baskets strewn out back of my cottage. In the mornings, I'll look out of my window to see Nancy storming up the path between her house and mine to the clothesline. She wears a faded nightgown flowing behind her in her determined wake, arms piled with sheets under her thick grey bob of hair. She looks almost like a ghost, whisking around through the world without consequentially interacting with her environment. Just moving from station to station. She has lots of friends who hang around her place, many of whom look a lot like her, act like her. I would not be fazed even if I woke up one night to find Nancy and a circle of her friends sitting naked on her lawn chanting under a full moon. I'm not sure if I've been here yet for a full moon, come to think of it.... Anyhow, I really like my little cottage. And I'm finding just how much cooking you really can do with a plug-in rice cooker.

Barrels being steralized



Cleaning fermentation tanks

The patio out back of my one-room cottage

The Grape Harvest Begins!

September 4th

Today was the first day of the harvest. Being a "harvest intern" at a respectable winery is not, it turns out, all that glamorous of a job. Of course I knew that going into it. And I knew that it was going to be a lot of physical labor and long hours. And I signed up for that because that sounds right up my alley.


Half of me is an academic. I love heady debates, I love very specific snobbish lingo, I love being completely consumed by intellectual pursuits that stretch the nooks and crannies of my brain only accessible by excessive amounts of coffee at awful hours of the night.


The other half of me allofly looks at all of that intellectualizing with pity, so clearly missing all of the most important things in life by embroiling oneself in futile- and incredibly complicated- pursuits. In order to distract oneself from the actually petrifying symplicity of life. This side of me loves cooking, loves running and feeling myself sweat, loves country music, and wants a garden and a goat and a big family at my house when I get home at night. This is the side of me that heard "living in a one-room cottage without running water and working long hours of physical labor" and said "sign me up". And.... here I am.


On the way out of the door this morning, I cheerily asked my landlord Nancy- who was loading her many small dogs into her Prius- where she was off to today. "I feed a pack of feral cats in Occidental on Tuesdays". "....OH!", was all I could think of saying, and with that, I kick-started Clementine, my loyal cream-colored moped, and spead off to the road-side coffee stand on the way to my first day at the vineyard.


Marimar Estate, from the road, looks like the kind of soft sunsplashed and sepia-toned vineyard of rolling hills and even rows that you would see in a coffee-table book about Tuscany. Except right in the middle of the romantic rows of plump pinot, are three massive papier-mache-looking border collie statues. Marimar's dogs. Who are apparently incredibly dumb and haven't figured out how to move out of the way of a backing-up forklift, I would later be warned.


I zipped through the cathedral gates of the estate on my moped after a freezing ride through North Bay fog, found my other intern cronies and we all sat down for a get-to-know-ya safety briefing about not passing out from lack of oxygen when shoveling grape skins out of fermentation tanks. And about how not to fall INto the tanks when "punching down grape skins" from the catwalks above the massive tanks because it would probably take quite a while for everyone else to find you.


I was able, during the meeting, to look around and suss out my fellow interns. And the cast of characters seems promising: There's Jordan- a red-bearded young guy in plaid and carharts who is a permanent employee and lives on the property. He later told me how happy he was to have killed and processed a deer BEFORE harvest starts so he has food for the fall. Then there's Henry- a younger, definite go-getter of an All American Boy, also in plaid, who's worked a harvest before and seems to know how to do everything perfectly, while I stare blankly at demonstrations and ask to please show that middle part one more time. Then there's Patrick- a man in his mid fifties or so with a pot-belly and halotosis, but who is otherwise, a perfectly nice guy. He told me, over our lunch-time sandwiches, all about his experience cooking for the hungry brutish crew of a crab ship. Later that afternoon, he seemed to have gotten lost while wandering up and down the rows of grapes "randomly sampling bunches"- an actually bonefied task, determining when we'll start harvesting. And then Tony, the nicest guy in the world, the cellar manager.


After the ridiculously disingenuous group of idiots I worked for and with at the Italian restaurant where I started peddling wine, I'm very much relieved with the cast of characters that, so far in my limited experience, dominates the nitty-gritty production end of wine.


More tomorrow!