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!