Harvest Time

On Monday, we harvested the rest of the Sauvignon Blanc by 11am, but finished cleaning by 5pm. The separator took the most time. It is a rectangle about 15 feet tall and comes to a point at the bottom where the free run juice comes out. It is difficult to clean because all of the wet skins need to come out a small door at the bottom. So I climbed into this uncomfortable device and soaked myself in water while getting the grapes out. I enjoyed it because it's something I couldn't do at any other job. And I probably never will again because no modern wineries use the inefficient separators anymore.

Our clothes came back from the store with labels of the winery on them. They say Bon Cap, harvest 2011, and on the back, "Think like a grape." I don't know who's bright idea that one was.

The next day we took samples from eight vineyards and I pressure washed the press. Marinus racked a tank of Sauvignon Blanc after one day of keeping it cold, losing about 500 gallons of lees. I wondered if leaving it for longer would have decreased the loss, but I just kept my mouth shut and assumed he knew what he was doing because he's the winemaker.

Today, we received one block of Chardonnay instead of two because 1)A wheel on one of the tractors almost fell off because it was too wobbly, so we had to shovel half of the load into the other trailer; 2)The tractor pulling the harvester broke down and they had to fix it; 3)The arm on the harvester broke off. It was an interesting day. Marinus warned me that they had a bad track record with harvesting Chardonnay. When filling one of the tanks, the door leaked until we opened it up and re-closed it. To press the Chardonnay, Marinus only squeezed it twice which was very fast but left the grapes wet, which I've always been told is a bad thing because it is wasting juice. But again, he's the winemaker not me. But it seems like everything here is inefficient. I'm beginning to understand why they can't afford new barrels.