We’re still more than a week away from receiving any grapes from our outlying vineyards, but for my own sake, I consider my early arrival as indispensable, akin to an SAT prep course.
A few months ago, my planning and glassy expectations had me rolling into the winery a few days before the fruit, making introductions, and being set to task. I should have known better; I’ve lived on construction sites for the last 5 years. There’s a natural, underlying current to a place like a winery—personalities and processes, dynamics and dictums that you just don’t stroll in on. Every rubber gasket and coil of hose has a home, every facial expression has meaning—which may not be obvious or intuitive to an outsider—so making sense of the flow will be sink or swim for a newbie like me. The less I need to ask and the fewer slips and trips I make when it’s crunch time, the better for all of us.
[The 2010 WCW Pinot Noir getting a light filtering before it hits the bottling line.]
[A honkin' cluster of Pinot Noir, nearly a pound, awaiting transport to the lab.]
Measuring sugar content and ph will be one of my daily tasks. Michael, the winemaker at Walnut City, had me practice on a cluster of Pinot Noir brought in from a vineyard in the Dundee Hills. I vigorously extracted the juice, crushing every grape into pulp to ensure a homogenized sample. A small, telescope-like tool called a portable refractometer when held to the light with a few drops of juice displays the sugar content—18.5 brix (one degree brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution) for this cluster.
Love to those back home!
-Rob.
And you thought you’d never use that high school Chemistry. HA!
this is so awesome! thank you for sharing so much!
*happy face!*
we are still waiting on fruit. what a year …