As you read this (and previous Shrub Reports), you are hopefully getting a glimpse of the wine industry that maybe is more enlightening (or even factual) than we've seen in the Hallmark Christmas Winery "Documentaries". Now I'm not saying that the love story in those movies isn't possible (look at Maggie and me!), but most of the other aspects are purely fantasy.
Now that harvest season is over for us and the crush is finished, perhaps understanding one of the seasonal jobs will help you steer clear of owning a winery. As you all know, we ferment the juice and musts (grapes and juice) in our stainless steel tanks. For a red varietal of grape, we destem the fruit and pump it into the tank where it will live, fermenting, the next two weeks or so. The wine picks up its color, flavors, tannins et al from its time sitting on the skins.
After this primary fermentation is finished, we separate the wine from all the skins using our press. But I'm glossing over how we actually do this. First, we put a sump with a slotted screen under the racking (upper) valve of the tank and open the valve. As the skins will be mostly "floating" on top of the wine, we can pump this directly into the receiving tank, picking up any random skins with the screen. Eventually, more skins start coming through as we remove all the liquid from the tank. At this point, we pull the sump away and bring bins in to collect all the skins.
These skins still have a lot of wine in them, and this is what we plan to put into our press to get the remaining wine separated. Each tank has a door on the bottom front allowing us to put a bin underneath to scrape the skins into. That works for the first 3/4 of the tank, but the remaining amount needs to be shoveled out. Enter Paul, the owner.
Now, this is an enclosed area with potentially higher levels of CO2. From a safety point of view, one needs to be trained to enter an enclosed space such as this (and better if it's the owner of the business). So I don on my harness, attach a pull-rope (in case I faint and have to be pulled), put my CO2 monitor on, make sure the fans are running up top, and contort my body to fit into the manhole.
On the exterior, by California law, I need to have two people who are CPR certified just in case there is an issue upon pulling me out. (Luckily everyone at the winery is CPR certified, thanks to our daughter, Hanna!) And then I shovel and shovel and shovel until the tank is empty. As the owner, I am the only one allowed to do this, so I get to do it on every tank of the entire harvest. Yeah me!
As I get older, my body doesn't seem to like this adventure as much as it used to. But it's still a necessary task, emptying the tank to be pressed (as it doesn't do it by itself). The quality of the wine may be all about the work in the vineyards (see last week's post), but there is still sweat and tears from the whole staff in cellar to help them along the way. Thank you to Pablo, Douglas and, of course, Maggie (Brix Chick) for all the hard work this season. And please, someone, design a self-emptying tank!