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.