a window opens...

Today was my final day at Keever Vineyards. My job is done. It is complete. The juice is all safe inside the barrels, and I said my goodbyes {{big sigh...}}

So much can be seen, learned and experienced in 4 months, and I can honestly say, these have been days of extreme growth for me. Whenever you put yourself in uncomfortable & foreign situations, you start to change and if you look very carefully, you can see yourself opening your eyes a little wider to the massive world and all its magic.

This job, just like any other, has become part of my life now, my story, my history. The things I did and saw at the winery will forever affect the way I see wine as a part of the world and how it fits in our culture. I know that wine is so much more complex to make than majority of people think it is, because I did it. Of course, my experience working a harvest is very specific to me and the other factors of my life, but I can confidently say that this is a HARD job for anyone.

Most importantly, this experience has brought me to a whole new level of obsession for wine. It is magical. The entire transformation, the scientific processes, the grapes that each have a personality, the tanks that house them, the hoses pumping the juice, the bugs that are dying to get into every crevice and drink it, the barrels that smell like a wet forest floor, the coolness and darkness of caves, the people who lovingly spend their lives devoted to this beverage, this culture, this life.

Thankfulness does not amply describe the feeling that consumes me on this last day of my life at the winery. I am overjoyed to have spent so many mornings, afternoons and evenings at Keever Vineyards, where I tried so hard to soak up every drop of information, the processes and theories that allow us to make mind-blowing wine.

As I transition to another job and open another chapter of my life, I will close this one forever, but never forget the moments that really challenged my body and mind.

I wonder what harvest will be like next year...

Signing off, the girl and the grape bids you many happy harvests to come. Thanks for reading my journey of "THE HARVEST: juicy stories from a wine intern"


Cheers,

the traveling grape

the cycle from grape to glass continues, as our red grapes evolve and change every day and get closer to becoming delicious wine.

after weeks of all-day TLC given to the grapes (via Pumpovers 3x a day!) the sugar levels have finally dropped to almost dry, which means it is time to drain the tanks and press the grapes! {{the next step later this week: transfer to our french barrels!}}

this also means, sarah gets to climb inside the tanks and shovel. cardio workout here i come!!!

it was SO cold today in napa, as the dark grey billowing clouds loomed over the valley, and it started to sprinkle. after emptying out some tanks and spraying them with scalding hot water from the inside, (which created a nice, momentary sauna effect that felt SO good) i was drenched and freezing. oh, dont worry, i spent 20 intimate minutes with a hair dryer to go from sopping to damp, to make the remainder of the day bearable. how did i forget my extra clothes on THIS day!?

this step is really fun, but i am physically exhausted from it. my sleep (and next paycheck) will be well deserved. (and im sorry i have no energy for correct punctuation or capitalization today; maybe tomorrow...)

Main Course

" Looks like on the agenda today we have...Pumpovers. Pumpovers. Pumpovers. A Screen and Tub. Sprinkler. Firehose. Sanitize. Rinse. Water push. Fermentation Monitoring. Check heater. Check glycol. Surprise juice shower!!!"

That is the daily production jargon and string of tasks invading my life, 7 days a week. We are now in the thick of production, after harvesting our entire estate plus our outsourced vineyards within a couple of action-packed days. Every morning, a new block of fruit came in with a whole new personality, look and feel. Some grapes were beautiful, round, firm skinned, juicy, perfection. Other grapes were shriveled, pebble-like, disfigured, rotten, nibbled on, gross. I touched them all. I got to stand on the front lines, the first position on the sorting table, so I really did get to see every grape come in, grab them, roll them around and discerningly decide if the clusters were good enough. Judgment day for grapes. The cabernet going into the Corra cab was perfection, along with our Syrah from the Page Nord vineyard.

There was so much variation from block to block, row to row, and even picker to picker. Chris said that since hired grape pickers are paid by the ton, the sneaky ones don't care if they put in the occasional rock, handful of leaves, or dry stems just to increase the weight!!! How rude.


During grape sorting, we found a small golf-size pencil, some green vineyard tape, and a precious little blue bellied lizard who was head down in a cluster of cabernet (not a bad place to be really, UNLESS he was not spotted and thrown into the destemmer!)

This is the main course of this experience for me, the apex, the climax, the sha-bang, the pulp. I am exhausted and look pretty gnarly with my matted wet hair slopped back into a pony tail or uneven braids, grey stained skin, and a half-awake smile. BUT, this is the way life is right now, and the wine that is going to emerge after this is over is more than worth my bitching.

Cheers,

October Photo Reel

Cheers,

Picking Up Speed

Early Tuesday morning we arrived rested and ready to receive our first harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes; our baby, our flagship. It is always a little scary and nerve racking the morning of harvest because you simply don't know how the day is going to go, and just HOPE that the hours won't be too brutal on your body and mental well-being.

And then, just as I started to get too anxious, the gorgeous Napa sunrise started to communicate a message to me..."here you go, this is what you've been waiting for... so now go soak it in and enjoy."

I did in fact drink in every last drop of that day. I sorted grapes for half the day on our vibrating sorting table, watching whole clusters of rich dark purple grapes bounce along while I squished, squeezed and pulled searching for the best most plump berries. Even though 2010 is considered to be a mild year in terms of heat, it was sad to see so many berries fall victim to the sun's vigor that has occurred over the last couple days.

After a satisfying and successful first day working with Cabernet, I started to feel better about my purpose here in Napa and as an intern. Just like the hot air balloons I see every morning, you need to add a little burst of fire sometimes to propel yourself back up to see the beautiful world around you more clearly and gain perspective.

I am now proficiently performing pump-overs. The hardest part of this task is setting up the pump correctly and then finding a way to stand over the tank so that your back doesn't go out from exhaustion! I am very sore today, and I have never had so many random bruises, but I'm pretty happy to have had my hands on so many grapes this week.

Cheers,

Fall is in the air

It is fall in Napa.

The air has rapidly cooled to completely crisp this week. It is almost too chilly to keep your bedroom window open at night, but the first step out the door in the morning is shockingly refreshing and exciting.

Every street is bustling with signs of harvest. Beat up old trucks parked wherever is convenient for hauling bins, full containers of fruit being carried down the highway, and most exciting, vines bursting with ripe fruit is covering valley floor.

At Keever, patience is more than a virtue, it is a steadfast policy. Until our grapes are PERFECTLY ripe, we aren't picking a single berry.

We are all getting anxious, stir crazy, a little aggravated, but the reality is that the quality of our wine is the most important thing, especially when you make such few cases and plan to sell it all.

At the winery, we are keeping ourselves busy any way we can. We got our second block of Sauvignon Blanc grapes from the Jonquil vineyard last week, so that certainly occupied some time, but is nothing compared to what the red is going to do to our days.

Still waiting, still smiling...

Cheers,

Same Passion, Different Perspective: Miner Family intern, & my dear friend, Jenny Brown beautifully dishes on her endeavor in the valley.

I am a wine maker.

Ruby juice drips through my fingers and splatters my shirt during the pumpover. I taste the grenache... 7 days in tank, 4 days into fermentation, and the few berries that are left are the sweetest, most delicious, effervescent berry bombs of flavor. oh my god. It is happening. What I have been working and waiting for and it is just the beginning.
I am making wine.
Over the past 7 weeks I have moved from Sacramento to Napa, jumping tracks from wine retail to production, and I have been absorbing the behind the scenes cellar action of a 25,000 annual case production winery as if I was the driest sponge. (now moist. just for you mitchell.) As a harvest cellar worker for Miner Family Winery, I have been working with a well versed crew to prep and pamper the winery for this season’s crush.

I am absolutely freaking IN LOVE.

I’ve cleaned up bat poo, topped barrels with wine, sulfured barrels, power washed a plethora of bins (which I loved…felt like Rambo for a week and scored a sweet farmer tan!) sanitized tanks, hand polished the presses (over 16 hours of wax on/wax off), lugged hoses, cleaned, mastered a one-hand clamp, busted butt on the bottling line, bull-dogged wine from barrels, cleaned equipment, racked wine off the lees, measured and calibrated tanks, cleaned, saved frogs, combined chemicals, electricity and water, cleaned, crushed, perfected pumpovers (well, almost), learned to drive a fork-lift (and hell yes I am down for a fork-lift rodeo! yee haw!), shoveled rotting fruit, climbed into fermentation tanks and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned…


All in preparation for this day.
This first witness of change, the beautiful berries beginning their transformation into delicious, enticing, mature wine. Wine - a labor of love which begets love. Love unto others, love of the earth, love of this life.

The sugars are going down and alcohol levels are starting to rise….


Oh, and I learned that you can actually SEE carbon dioxide. Shimmering in the air... blurring the distant view like a mirage in the desert. (Then I was told not to stand with my head over the open tank.)