Instead of paper, we use barrels. Instead of crayons, we use grape concentrate. Instead of "staying inside the lines", we stay inside the staves. Oh yes, today was one I have been anxiously awaiting...barrel painting day!
A mixture of grape concentrate, vodka (Gordon's, what else!?), citric acid and the least precious of our precious wine, all mixed together to create a stain so beautiful Picasso would be proud to use it. The goal of this mixture is to make a stain that we paint on the middle wooden section of the barrel, (called a stave) to make our cave aesthetically pleasing. The composition of the mixture doesn't allow mold or any other crazy disease to fester on or in the barrels and doesn't contaminate the finished wine.
Instead of using paintbrushes like some wineries, we just used cloths to saturate and smooth the stain over the middle stave of the barrel. We cautiously wore rubber gloves for this job, but that hardly mattered when it came to staying clean. The inside of my forearms were tie-dyed with swipes of the purple stain to create a nice massive bruise effect. Sadly, real bruises did form on my knees and shins from kneeling down to paint the underside of the barrels. My boss said "if you don't get bruises from cellar-work, you're doing something wrong".
8 hours of beautifying our barrels and we were almost done. Chris and I had a conversation that somehow led to the creation of "rat language" (get the reference, cellar rat!?). Apparently I start to loose my marbles after 8 hours of no sunlight. It was a blast, and the rat squeaking and laughing got us through this gnarly day of wine painting.
No comments:
Post a Comment