Category: Weekly Harvest Summary

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How to Find a Harvest Position!

a woman leaning against and sniffing a wine barrel

I’m writing this in mid-May 2021, which is the perfect time to start looking for a harvest position! As long as you’re in the northern hemisphere of course. If you’re in southern hemisphere (New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Chile, etc.), you’ll have to wait a few more months before wineries there start looking for interns.

If you’ve read my other post, you’ll know that I found my harvest internship in a Facebook group (check it out below!) I think I started looking a little bit earlier than May, but there are lots and lots of postings out and about right now. People even find their internship positions pretty close to the beginning of harvest, because people cancel or can’t make it to the region. This is also the only time I’ve ever worked in a winery, so don’t worry if you don’t have any experience! Everyone has to start somewhere!

Woman standing in winery rolling her eyes with wine splashed on her face
This is what happens when you go in with no winery experience! Or probably even if you’ve been making wine for years

There are a few things that I think helped me get the position. For one thing, I was super excited and passionate about wine, and I think that showed through when I talked to the winemaker. I talked about why I was interested and how I had taught myself and learned a lot about wine on my own. I knew the basics of winemaking but hadn’t done it yet myself. I think it was also good that I had experience working in a machine shop in school. That showed that I wasn’t afraid to work hard and get my hands dirty. I had 4-hour shifts (sometimes two in a row) where I was on my feet the whole time. That is very similar to a winery, although some days it was closer to 12 hours ;). 

So now let’s get to the good stuff! Where should you actually look to find a winery internship? I searched far and wide, signed up for many email lists, and luckily saved a lot of links so that I can share with you. I’ll sort by area of the world, so if you’re interested in a certain region, you can scroll to find that. 

a woman standing in a tank full of wine grapes taking a selfie
Some of the fun you’ll get to have if you work in a winery!

ANYWHERE

First, my favorite, and where I found my position: the Facebook group aptly titled “Travelling Winemakers – Living the Dream!!”

This is a cool group where people post pictures and thoughts about working in wineries, as well as a lot of posts from wineries looking for interns. People will literally post from all over the world; I have seen posts from Germany, the UK, New Zealand, and obviously the US (but ALL over the US!) Definitely check it out, even just for fun! Keep in mind that it might be difficult to travel to different regions due to the pandemic.

UNITED STATES

Winejobs.com – Weekly Harvest Help alerts

This is a website that has postings for all kinds of wine related positions: from cellar to vineyard to tasting room. I just checked, and 11 new postings were made today! They are all in California, but I have seen postings from Washington, Oregon, and even Maine! I signed up for their weekly newsletter for harvest help positions and still get it in my inbox each week!

VENjobs from UC Davis

This is kind of an underground site that I found after lots of digging. I went to UC Davis (although I did not study viticulture and enology there) so I feel a connection to the town and campus. I am kind of sad I never did anything wine related, because they have a lot going on! They also have this page with postings for winery positions. Most of the opportunities are for harvest, but a couple are for tasting rooms. They are also mostly in California, particularly northern California, but I did see a couple in Oregon and one in the UK. 

Winebusiness.com

This site is connected to winejobs.com, so there are similar jobs (I would still check it out and click around), but one thing that I like from here are the classifieds. You can sign up for the classifieds (PDF) to be emailed to you, and this also contains listings for jobs in the wine industry. There are versions for different regions: Northwest (Oregon and Washington), North Coast (of California) and Central Coast (of California). I signed up for the Northwest version because I was living in Seattle at the time, and still enjoy looking at the grapes and bulk wine for sale that are also listed in the PDF.

CANADA

Winejobs Canada

Same as wine jobs, but for Canada!

ELSEWHERE

Wine Jobs Online – New Zealand (and global)

Wine jobs online is another winery position posting site that mostly has opportunities based in New Zealand. It claims it also has global positions, and I did see some for the UK and Australia, and one for Germany (lol). However, the majority of positions are in New Zealand. 

A woman standing in front of wine barrels drinking a glass of wine
Sometimes you even get to drink wine!

Hopefully you found this useful if you’re looking for a harvest position or internship at a winery this year! Or even if you’re not, I think it’s fun to see what’s out there. If you’re not at all interested in making wine and just want to drink it, check out my recent post on wine and food pairing! 

If you do find a harvest position from this post, please do let me know! I’d love to hear if it helped!

 

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Reflections on Harvest

And just like that, harvest is over. It’s almost Thanksgiving and I just finished my last day at the winery. Over the past week things have been slow. VERY slow. We have cleaned and recleaned all the tanks, we mop the floors at least twice a day, and in general have to try really hard to find things to do. The wine still needs some attention, but it’s only a couple hours of work every few days, so they don’t need me anymore. That’s fine with me; I can’t wait to go home to celebrate my mom’s birthday and Thanksgiving!

These past few months have been quite the experience. I learned so much about making wine and the wine industry overall. I’m so grateful that I had this opportunity. I’m also grateful that I was able to make the decision to go after this crazy experience, leaving a nice cushy job behind. I feel like I can do anything now! That is a great feeling, but it’s also overwhelming to have so many options and so many things I want to try! 

I think a little reflection is always good though. Hopefully this will help me sort through my options and decide what to pursue next, and maybe even help someone who wants to try working at a winery for the first time and has no idea what to expect. 

There were a lot of great things about working at a winery that made me really glad I did it. 

I got to meet a lot of new and different people who I never would have met otherwise. People have a lot of different reasons for working in wine. They can come from a totally different field, following their passion like my fellow intern and myself. They can be someone who has studied wine and comes from an academic background. They can be someone who works harvests and does other things during the rest of the year. It was a great chance to meet people with different perspectives, which was a change from my previous job where I felt like I was surrounded by a lot of people on a similar path. 

            I got to taste a lot of wine! Being in a wine region means there were endless opportunities to go taste wines from other wineries, which is a great opportunity to learn about other wines made in the same region. I was tasting wines made from grapes grown in the same climate and soil but produced using drastically different winemaking techniques and styles. I also got to taste a lot of wine at the winery where I was working. It was cool to taste it throughout the fermentation process, and I’m looking forward to trying it once it has been bottled!

            Speaking of the fermentation process, I also learned a lot about the actual process of making wine. I worked at a relatively small winery where we processed just over 100 tons of grapes. That is a very specific experience, and would be different from the process at a much smaller or much larger winery, but it was still valuable to see how wine goes from grapes to bottle.

            I also made a lot of connections. The winemaker I worked for came from Napa, so she knows a lot of people up there and has offered to send my resume to people she knows. As they say, “it’s who you know, not what you know.” So this experience has definitely opened doors and could lead to further opportunities in wine. 

            And finally, the overtime. Because this is an internship and a temporary position, we were hourly employees, so those days of overtime really added up. There were a couple nice paychecks that I was able to save away for later. However, our harvest was very short so those long hours didn’t last that long. It’s important to remember that a job like this depends on so many factors, and many people working in Napa had their harvests cut short and found themselves without any paycheck. 

While there are many upsides to this job and industry, there are also some downsides that I think it’s important to be aware of before trying it out for yourself. 

First of all, it is a very physical job, and you’re going to be busy and exhausted. We worked six days a week, with all of those days being at least 10 hours long. A lot of them were closer to 12 hours, and some were more like 14. Particularly on those days, I would get home, maybe scarf some food down, maybe take a shower (or maybe not), then go to bed only to wake up and do it all over again. I am not a coffee drinker but at the end of weeks like that I made sure to have some instant coffee ready to go. Otherwise I had tea every morning. I survived and definitely got stronger throughout the process, but the routine also saved me. 

These long weeks also took a toll on my body. My feet were sore every morning when I woke up. Luckily this faded once I got to work up, but it added up over time. My hands also got stained from all the grapes and wine. And tightening all of those valves left my hands cracked and dry. My right index finger is still cracked on the spot where I generally tightened the valves. I had one day off, which didn’t allow much time for exploring the area or entertaining people who maybe would want to visit. Working a harvest means sacrificing a lot of freedom for those 3-4 busy months. Committing to the wine industry means basically always losing the harvest season. All jobs have their sacrifices though, so if you decide you never want to go anywhere during the months of August through November or even December. 

Every job has its stresses. In this case, I was helping to make some gooood wine. This comes with a lot of pressure though, especially as a first time wine intern. I spilled wine once while doing a pumpover and thought it was the end of the world. Then I saw a video of a tank that broke in another winery, spilling thousands of gallons of wine and flooding the cellar. I also left the heater on in a bin of Pinot Noir overnight, heating the wine way more than it was supposed to be. That also ended up ok. In the end, we tasted all the wines and none of them were gross! However, there were still some stressful times along the way.

While there were some tough times, I survived my first harvest! It’s a lot of work and takes patience and perseverance. If winemaking is your passion, go for it!

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Slower Weeks in the Winery

Now that it’s slower in the winery with no more fruit coming in, what do we even do every day?  Sometimes I wonder the same thing. Some days pass so slowly because there’s not much going on. We certainly don’t have the hectic energy of those crazy days of crushing 9 tons of Pinot Noir. In general, these days we are deep cleaning different parts of the winery, topping barrels, and organizing everything. 

One big project of the last week was organizing the barrels. Previously, we had been placing the barrels in rows based on when they were barreled down (filled with wine). There was no method to the madness. This made it difficult to find barrels from different blocks for adding ML bacteria, stirring, or topping. To make all of this easier, the barrels were organized in rows by block, with the best blocks of Pinot Noir in the first row. The barrels of Syrah and Grenache were in the last row, with everything else organized by block in between. So far this has been a great change, and the winery looks so much more neat and tidy!

Another big task is topping all the barrels. When the barrels are first filled, they are still fermenting slightly, so a gallon or two of headspace is left in the barrel. After all the sugar is fermented out, malolactic bacteria is added to convert the harsh malic acid to the softer lactic acid. At this point, the yeast has finished its job so it is no longer producing carbon dioxide gas, and we don’t need any headspace. Then we use the kegs and carboys of topping material that we have to fill up the barrels the rest of the way. This can be a tedious task involving pouring 2-3 gallons of wine into each barrel. Especially for the barrels on the lower level this can take a long time; only the 1-liter pitcher is small enough to fit between the upper and lower barrels. One liter is about a quarter of a gallon, so that means filling each barrel one-quarter of a barrel at a time. Quite the task!

Some of the samples we collected and tried.

Otherwise, we are cleaning the winery from top to bottom, pressure washing all the tanks, and generally waiting for Thanksgiving to get here. There are some highlights though! On Wednesday this past week, we spent all afternoon tasting all of the wines from 2019 as well as all the wines we’re making this year. That morning, we collected samples of all the Pinot Noirs, Syrah, and Chardonnay from 2019, as well as samples from all of the 2020 Pinot Noirs. It was a lot of wine! I think we ended up tasting between 20 and 30 different wines. I definitely had favorites, but when you taste that many wines (especially when they are mostly Pinot Noir, and mostly made with grapes from the same vineyard), they all start to ~blend~ together. We were definitely spitting everything out though, because we were still at work and had to drive home. We also had some nice cheeses and crackers, always such a good accompaniment to wine. A fun afternoon overall; it felt like a little mini celebration of all our hard work. Turns out we made some pretty good wines this harvest ;).

Cheese and crackers – a great pairing with any wine.

After this weekend, I just have two more weeks of working at the winery! I’m super excited to go home for my mom’s birthday, and then celebrate Thanksgiving as well! It’ll be great to have the chance to relax and reflect on what’s next for me. 

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Week 7… and 8

Well, I’ve had a little bit more time the past two weeks and yet I’ve been slacking on this blog! It’s that weird phenomenon that I sometimes experience where if I am pressed for time, I am much more focused. Then, apparently when I have shorter workdays and more time in the evenings, I relax and put off things like blogging! And cleaning my room. And renewing my passport… It’s ok though, I’m going to treat this past week of Netflix bingeing as my recovery period and move forward.

Anyway, in the past two weeks the Syrah has gone from inoculation to fermenting to being put in barrels! The grenache is going a little more slowly, but sometimes good things take time! As the fermentation for both varieties progressed, they required fewer punch downs and fewer pump-overs, making our days shorter and shorter! There is still plenty to do though. Now that we aren’t processing fruit, it is time to attend to the wine in barrels. This means stirring the Chardonnay, monitoring any white wines that are a little stuck in their fermentations, and topping barrels. I have topped many barrels in the last week, which is kind of tough. Unless I’m doing it with someone else, I find myself constantly climbing up and down barrels to fetch more pitchers of wine to pour into each barrel. 

Just some of the wine selection for the harvest party.

This week did have something at the end to look forward to! On Friday, we had our harvest party to celebrate all of the hard work during this busy season. It was a great opportunity to have everyone from all parts of the winery come together (outside of course!). The winemaking team was there, as well as everyone from the tasting room, the original founder of the winery, and some people from the estate right next door. It was such a beautiful night on the estate, with grilled food, good wine, and fun people. 

Some three pound tri tip steaks and half chickens for the harvest party.

Luckily, after the harvest party we did not have to go into the winery – I did not get as much sleep and I had a little more wine than I normally do! This was also my first weekend that I had both days off! Plenty of time to recover and also some time to be productive – speaking of, I just realized I need to go put my laundry in the dryer. I also used some of that time to go wine tasting! I visited the Alma Rosa tasting room to check out the newly released wines. Some of them I had tried before, but some were new to me and it was cool to taste some of the newer wines. Next, I visited McClain Cellars, just down the road. I’ll be writing more about that visit in another post!

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Week 6 – #LastBin

And with that, there is no more fruit to harvest! On Friday, October 9 we harvested the last of the grapes – Syrah and Grenache! We brought in 9.3 tons of fruit, a record for the amount we crushed in one day all season. With the large amount of grapes to process and the complexity of having two varieties, it was a big crushing day! We had been practicing for this moment all harvest though, and we crushed it. 

Grenache, ready to be CRUSHED

Until Tuesday of this week, we were not expecting to harvest the last fruit until the end of October! However, due to the heat waves here, the grapes ripened more quickly than planned. Of course, there’s only so much planning you can do when Mother Nature is involved. Some of the grapes ripened more than is ideal and we ended up with a lot of raisins to sort out.

Leading up to the big crush day, we had a few long days to prepare for the arrival of more fruit. The facility is pretty small, and the winery received almost double the tonnage of grapes this year versus last year. So, it has been an adventure for the winemaker to figure out where everything goes. To make room for the Syrah and Grenache that was coming, we had to drain the finished wine from tanks and press the rest of the wine from the grapes in those tanks. 

Now that we’ve processed all the fruit, things should start slowing down! We might even get two days off next week. We will have the daily tasks of pump-overs and punch-downs for the fermenting Grenach and Syrah. The remaining Pinot Noir in tanks also needs to be barreled down, and malolactic bacteria needs to be added to the barrels that are completely dry (finished fermenting). Originally, this internship was going to go until Thanksgiving, but with the earlier end to harvesting fruit, things might slow down sooner than expected. Sounds like I need to start thinking about what I’m going to do next…

3 Highlights

The Last Bin! This phrase refers to the last bin that you process for the season, marking the end of harvesting and processing fruit. It was fun for us all to yell “Last bin!” as we started sorting through the last bin of grapes and loading them into the crusher/destemmer. However, there is still plenty to do until the wine can just sit and age! 

The sorting table in action.

The day after the last bin. A nice calm after the storm, we had a chill day of simple tasks, like punch-downs, breaking down a barrel into smaller vessels, moving some barrels into  the cold room, and adding enzymes to the newly processed Grenache and Syrah. We started at 8 am instead of the usual 7 and were finished by 4:30! What a nice change of pace. There is something fun and exciting about those long days.

Stomping by foot on the Grenache and Syrah! Grenache and Syrah have such tough, thick skins that for the bins and tanks with whole cluster grapes (not crushed or destemmed) we had to get in and stomp on them by foot! First, I had to clean and sanitize my boots, then climb into the bin and actually stomp on the grapes. This was surprisingly tiring but also really fun. At one point four of us got into one tank and we got some great photos.

3 Things I Learned

Set a timer to turn off the chiller/heater! Don’t let your wine cook at 90 degrees overnight… Luckily the wine turned out ok but this could have killed the yeast and stopped fermentation too early, or otherwise adversely affected the taste/smell of the wine.

Make sure to clean any wine spills immediately and thoroughly! Fruit flies are attracted to wine and will multiply. Once they arrive it’s hard to get rid of them.

Check the pressure in your line/hose before opening a valve! Otherwise, wine might go everywhere.

3 Things I’m Looking Forward To

The upcoming harvest party! Everyone at the winery (cellar and tasting room) is going to get together to grill and drink some nice wines to celebrate harvest. We did it! We processed all the fruit!

Tasting all the wines we have aging in the cellar! Someday soon, on a slow day, we will get to sample all the wines from last year to see how they taste and learn about the aging process.

Seeing what this week has in store for us at the winery. Every week is so different and I’m curious to learn what’s next. I’m also looking forward to having some shorter days so I can do some more wine reading/watching/listening.

A beautiful Lompoc sunset.

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Week 5 – 93 Tons!

a woman leaning against and sniffing a wine barrel

Another week into harvest! This week provided a great opportunity to reflect on all we accomplished. On Wednesday, we received the last of the Pinot Noir fruit for this year. Once that was crushed and safely in bins for the cold soak – a cold soak is when the crushed grapes are kept at low temperatures so that the color and flavor is extracted slowly before fermentation starts; this also prevents the extraction of harsh tannins – we had processed 93 tons of fruit! It is difficult to imagine this amount of grapes, but it was all done over the whirlwind of 3 70-hour weeks. Thankfully, after Wednesday, the week calmed down a bit as we went back to the daily routine of morning pump-overs and punch-downs, other random tasks in the middle of the day, and then evening pump-overs and punch-downs starting at 4. 

To celebrate this momentous occasion of receiving the last of the Pinot Noir, we opened up a bottle of sparkling and treated ourselves as we were cleaning up for the day. What a relief to have a bit of the break! Early next week, we’ll take some samples of Grenache and Syrah from the vineyard to check the sugar and acid levels and make predictions on when those will be ready to pick. Until those are picked, we’ll just be paying attention to the Pinot Noir! 

Celebrating 93 tons with some sparkling!

Although we’ve received all the fruit, there is still plenty to do with the Pinot Noir! The most recent bins need to be inoculated to start the fermentation process. We also need to monitor the currently fermented pinot to determine when that is finished (when all the sugar is fermented into alcohol). At this point we will drain the finished wine and press the grapes to get the rest. The wine that is drained before pressing is called free run, and that is super high quality good stuff which we keep separated by the block of the vineyard the grapes came from. The grapes are then combined with grapes from other blocks in the press, which forces the rest of the juice out. This is just labeled “press” and is still great wine, but not as highly regarded as the free run. 

The free run and pressed wine are then “barreled down,” or transferred to barrels for the aging process. At that point, the maintenance goes way down. As the wine finishes fermenting, the barrels are topped to reduce the headspace, where oxygen can contact the wine. Once the wine is no longer producing a protective layer of CO2, oxygen is bad!!

3 Highlights

Finishing crushing the last of Pinot! There was such a feeling of accomplishment in the cellar as Samra (winemaker) announced the total of 93.1 tons and opened a bottle of sparkling. There had been some long days and weeks but looking back on it now that we’ve made it through the hardest part, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Showing my parents around the cellar! My parents drove down to Santa Barbara County from the Bay Area this past weekend and met up with me at the end of the day on Saturday. I was able to show them where I spend a lot of my time these days and give them some little samples of the Chardonnay and Vin Gris from this year. We also walked along Surf Beach and visited Los Olivos.

Feeling more comfortable on ladders! This is maybe a silly one but is definitely an accomplishment for me since I am not a fan of heights and used to avoid ladders whenever possible. However, it’s pretty necessary to access the huge stainless-steel tanks, so I got some on-the-job exposure therapy and now it feels like no big deal. 

3 Things I Learned

How to start malolactic fermentation. Just like starting the primary fermentation of sugar into alcohol, getting ML going is as easy as dissolving some bacteria in water and stirring it into the wine. Malolactic bacteria converts harsh malic acid into the softer lactic acid that is in milk and other dairy products (so it can lend a creamy note to wines). 

How to dig grapes out of a tank! As our Pinot Noir finished, it’s easy to drain the juice but to get the grapes out all you can do is climb in and get shoveling. It’s a hard job but satisfying to get lower and lower in the tank as you dig out the grapes you’re standing on. The lees (dead yeast) at the bottom of the tank is a really cool purple/pink color so that’s fun to uncover too.

How different yeasts act (and smell!) different as they are being activated. To activate yeast, you mix it slowly into water that is around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Different types of yeast supposedly highlight different things in the wines, like the terroir or tannins. There are different yeasts for different varietals as well. I wonder if wine yeast can be used to bake bread?

This yeast smells like butter to me.

3 Things I’m Looking Forward To

Learning how the Grenache and Syrah are progressing in the vineyard. We have about 18 tons left and process and then harvest will be over! Hard to believe that we’re about halfway through but have already processed over 80% of the fruit.

Reading a new book I ordered: Wine Talk by Frank J. Prial, the wine columnist for The New York Times for many years. The book is a collection of columns and I’m excited to see what he focused on and highlighted in the world of wine.

A (hopefully) less than 70-hour week this week! Those are exhausting! We are not planning on processing any fruit this week so it should be a little calmer. Although I talk a lot about how crazy and exhausting it is, I am truly enjoying this experience. A little hard work never hurt anyone, right?

Mmmmm, toasty.
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Wine Tasting! On My One Day Off From Winemaking

Last week was another long week! It was my fourth week working during harvest at Alma Rosa. The first week was calm and chill, just learning and only working 8 hours a day (what a time!) This past week, I worked almost 72 hours over six days, averaging about 12 hours a day. Needless to say, I’m exhausted. However, I’m getting used to it to the point that on my one day off, I had the energy to visit TWO other wineries and do some tasting. That’s what I’m going to focus on today.

Melville

I went on this adventure with the other intern I work with and his girlfriend. We were debating between visiting the town of Los Olivos and doing some tastings there, but had trouble getting reservations (it’s a popular area) and decided it would be cool to visit some estates. We were able to make a reservation for noon at Melville, so we made that our first stop. The estate there is beautiful. The winery is contained in the building that usually hosts the tasting room as well, and is surrounded by the vineyards of the estate. The house itself has ivy growing along the walls and is surrounded by olive trees. We sat outside (of course) on a picnic bench in the shade next to a lawn scattered with a couple Adirondack chairs overlooking the vineyard. Very picturesque (here’s a picture to prove it, with more to follow).

Melville’s focus is on giving a lot of attention to the grapes, putting in the effort there and then doing minimal additions once in the winery. I actually met someone who was interning at Melville for the harvest (just like me at Alma Rosa) who emphasized the winemaker’s focus on the viticulture aspect of winemaking. On Melville’s website, you can read that “At the time of harvest, we consider the wines to already be made and strive not to interfere with their natural path.” I think this shone through in tasting the wines, as they all had a similar minerality, highlighting the sandy soil in which most of the vines are grown.

As with many tasting lists you’ll find in the Santa Rita hills/Santa Barbara County area, this one started off with a Chardonnay, featured a few Pinot Noirs, and ended with a Syrah. The Chardonnay was an acidic, citrusy one that had not gone through malolactic fermentation and was aged in neutral oak barrels (15-20 years old). This Chardonnay had none of the oaky or creamy notes that can be so divisive. Although I do enjoy a creamier Chardonnay, I also enjoy a citrusy Chardonnay like this one if it’s placed in front of me. Basically, I will not say no to Chardonnay. This one in particular had notes of lemon on both the nose and palate, as well as distinct notes of saltiness. The sea breeze blowing over Lompoc hits the west side of the vineyard contributing to this saltiness. 

The next wine was the first of the Pinot Noirs – the 2017 Estate Pinot Noir. This wine is Melville’s flagship wine. It was a translucent garnet color, with aromas of raspberry and red fruits. It was light bodied, with the 40% whole cluster giving it some tannin and complexity. I now know from my own time in wine production that whole cluster means the entire cluster of grapes is put into whatever fermentation vessel is being used, stem and all. The non-whole cluster percentage is made up of grapes that are destemmed and crushed. It also had medium acidity and was overall light and easy to drink. 

The next wine was the 2018 Estate Pinot Noir made from Sandy’s block. Sandy’s block of grapes was named after Ron Melville’s sister Sandy. It’s also a sandy block! This wine was a little darker than the last, a brick red but still translucent. It also had aromas of red fruit and a slight saltiness. This wine was made using 50% whole cluster, lending it slightly more body. This wine also had a nice finish.

The last Pinot Noir was 67% whole cluster! That’s a lot of whole clusters. As a result, this wine was the heaviest of all the Pinots in body, but still relatively light for what a Pinot Noir can be. Overall, these showcased the fruit that is produced in the vineyard and the differences in whole cluster use but were otherwise somewhat similar in style.

Next, we tasted two Syrahs. Syrah has really been growing on me since I moved down here. This particular Syrah was made with 40% whole cluster (Melville really emphasizes the amount of whole cluster used in each wine!) This Syrah had a really nice aroma of herbs and spices, like lavender and cloves. It had medium body and medium acid. The second Syrah was an extra taste (it pays to be ~in the industry~). This was my favorite of all the tastes at Melville. It was grown in a high-density area of the vineyard, where the vines are planted only three feet apart. This forces the vines to compete for resources, resulting in fruit with high concentrations of flavor. I tasted notes of blackberry and other dark fruit. Again, this was my favorite, but I did not buy any wines today. For $50 a bottle, it’s gotta be a really good one.

Babcock

I won’t go into quite as much detail on the Babcock wines. It wasn’t a true tasting; apparently they don’t do tasting flights on the weekends (their website is misleading, it just says first come, first served). Again, it pays to be ~in the industry~ because when we told the server we were looking for a tasting and that we worked at Alma Rosa, she said, oh well I can bring you a few to taste and did a bit of an impromptu tasting for us. There were a lot of other people there so we didn’t hear as much about each wine. They all have fun names though: two of the Grenaches were “Love Among the Ruins” and “Opportunity Knocks.” 

Although we didn’t hear much about each wine we tried, we found out that one of the winemakers was sitting at a table nearby, so we started chatting about how harvest was going. They have a cool outdoor production facility and we could see a destemmer and a few presses hanging out. Apparently, the owner is a big believer in reforestation and so has cleared some of the vines with plans to plant oak and maybe build up a monarch population. Overall, it was a cool place with a fun atmosphere and I’m glad we visited. 

These are just two of the multitude of wineries in Santa Barbara County. Just outside the Alma Rosa Cellar there are at least 8 tasting rooms to visit (of course I never can while I’m working). The nearby town of Los Olivos apparently has 50+ tasting rooms to visit, so I’ve got my work cut out for me!

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Week 3 – Pump-Overs and Punch-Downs

Well, I just finished working 7 days in a row. Last Sunday was only a 7.5 hour day, but then Monday through Saturday were all 12+ hour days. Because we received so many grapes the week before, we had many (almost all) tanks full of fermenting grapes and juice. All of those tanks required morning and afternoon pump-overs or punch-downs every day to mix the grapes and juice. There has to be a certain amount of time between the morning and evening punch-down/pump-over for each tank, so after doing them in the morning, we can’t start the evening ones until 4 pm. This process can take to 3 hours, so we won’t be out of there until 6 at the earliest. Usually there are other things to be done too, so most days we didn’t finish for the day until 7:30 or later. However, on Saturday night, we were able to leave before 6!! We honed in on the most efficient ways to do punch-downs and pump-overs for all of our tanks, and got it done in less than 2 hours! Hopefully we can keep that up! (more on pump-overs and punch-downs later, in the things I learned section).

When I signed up for this, I knew I wouldn’t be doing much else other than working. I knew that harvest is a crazy time, and it becomes your life when you’re working at a winery. However, it is still difficult to prepare for 6 12-hour (or more) days in a row. It has been such a valuable experience to learn what truly goes into making wine. During the day sometimes we talk about the difference between European (Old World) winemaking styles and the style in the New World. Of course, within the New World there is still a lot of variation, even from Santa Barbara County in southern California to Napa in northern California. I think it would be amazing to tour Europe (France and Italy in particular) and visit different wineries to learn how they do things.

All ready to be punched down!

3 Highlights

Learning the next part of the process for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – how to ferment and monitor and maintain. This week, we only received grapes on Monday and Tuesday, then spent the rest of the week 

Talking to Samra about how she became a winemaker. Last Sunday, it was a slower day so it was just me and Samra working. I was able to ask about how she ended up at Alma Rosa and in Santa Barbara County. She has a really interesting story, moving from Bosnia to work in Napa, and then down to SBC. 

Waking up at 6 am is getting easier! I’ve got my routine down to a tight 25 minutes from bed to car. Then I drive to work, which takes about 25 minutes, giving me a 10 minute buffer. I love a good morning routine.

Bonus: Going out to dinner on the night before my day off; delicious food, good wine, and then still an early bedtime! Toscana Pizzeria in Solvang has amazing crust. I also got one of the specials, the sole piccata. Amazing. 

  • Yeast!
  • Yeast likes wine too 😉

3 Things I Learned

Pinot Noir is finicky and particular. This varietal needs to be at a very specific temperature to ferment, and will start and stop fermenting. I’m sure the type of yeast has something to do with it as well, because different yeasts work better at different temperatures and under different conditions as well. 

Pumpovers and punchdowns: essential but repetitive and difficult! As red varietals ferment, the CO2 that is produced as the yeast turns sugar into alcohol pushes the grape skins to the top of the juice (the grape juice is called must). These skins form a thick layer called the cap. With red wine, you want all the good flavor and color from the skins to be extracted into the juice. For that, you need the skins to contact the must. You can make that happen by doing either a punchdown or a pumpover, depending on the type of tank. For some tanks, you connect a hose to the valve at the bottom of the tank, then pump the juice over the top, soaking the cap and mixing the juice and skins. For the huge bins that we have to ferment some grapes, you do a punch down, which involves pushing a long metal rod with a flat piece of metal on the end down into the skins. This pushes the skins down into the juice, again mixing the skins and juice and also aerating the juice. 

Always secure a hose that’s pumping wine! Or ask someone to help! I was doing a pumpover on one of the pinot noir tanks, and at the end when I was cleaning up I was walking the line to empty the rest of the juice out. As I was doing doing it, the hose shifted and fell out of the top of the tank, spilling juice, soon to be wine, all over the floor. Whoops. 

A successful pump-over, no spilled wine included!

3 Things I’m Looking Forward To

Starting malolactic fermentation on Chardonnay. After Chardonnay is finished fermenting and all of the sugar is gone, it can go through a secondary fermentation. This is called malolactic fermentation, where harsh malic acid is converted to lactic acid. Almost all red wines go through malolactic fermentation (ML), but only a few white wines go through ML. Chardonnay can be one of them!

Learning about process for Pinot Noir after pressing – this past week we pressed our first tank of Pinot Noir that was finished fermenting. Supposedly, Pinot Noir will not start tasting like the final wine product until March or April. Right now, it just tastes like fruit juice. 

More wine tasting in Santa Barbara County! By working at a winery and living with someone who works in a tasting room for a different winery, I’ve been able to try wines from multiple wineries so far. There are so many more to try though! A good activity for my one day off each week. 

Something I Listened To

I’ve been on the search for more podcasts about wine, and I recently came across one called Reading & Drinking. The host, Jill Zimorski reviews books about wine. I just listened to Episode 4, about the book How to Drink Wine by Grant Reynolds. It is a very honest review, and I love her approach as a sommelier: her goal is to discover cool new wines and stories about them that she share with others. She was very genuine and I will definitely be listening to more of her reviews (I will not be reading How to Drink Wine, but hopefully I’ll find another good wine book to dive into!)

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Week 2 – Things Get Real

Wow! What a week. I knew coming into this I would be working hard. However, I was not fully prepared. My first long day was Wednesday, and I was amazed, a 12-hour day! I arrived at the winery a little before 7 in the morning and left a little before 7 at night. Wow. However, that was nothing compared to the next 2 days. On Thursday, a 15-hour day, we crushed about 10% of the grapes that we would be receiving over the entire harvest. That’s a lot of grapes. And then there’s all the other stuff you have to do to process grapes after crushing them, like the punchdowns (pushing the grape skins that float to the top down into the juice so it all mixes up and you get all the good color and flavor from the skins) and pumpovers (similar purpose, but pumping the juice from the bottom over the top of the grape skins). You also have to inoculate with yeast and add any other additions. And then all the cleaning of course! Everything that touches wine or is used in any way has to be cleaned and sanitized before AND after using it. For small things, no big deal, you just rinse it in the big bins of cleaning chemicals one by one. However, for large things like hoses and tanks, they have to be thoroughly rinsed, then you have to run each chemical through each hose for a good 5-10 minutes, rinsing with water in between each step. For tanks, they have to be scrubbed down, which involves donning a rainsuit and climbing inside the tank (good thing I’m not too claustrophobic). 

Lots of Pinot Noir grapes this week! After the heat of last weekend, suddenly ALL the grapes decided to be ready.

Hopefully this gives you some sense of how much goes into each day of production at a winery. There are so many other little things too, as well as transferring wine from vessel to vessel, measuring the sugar level and temperature to monitor fermentation, and general maintenance and cleaning of everything. With all of this, it’s not surprising that the last 3 days of this week, I worked 12, 15, and 14 hours consecutively. That 15-hour day was a rough one. Just sitting down in my car to drive home felt amazing. However, each day goes by very quickly because there is so much to do. There is usually a period of time of about an hour in the late afternoon where I realize “we still have a LOT to do today and it’s already 4:30” and I know we’re in for a long day. It’s all about the mindset you have though. If you go into the day just wanting to get it over with and get back home, you’re going to have a tough time. But if you treat each task or activity on its own and think about why it’s necessary without thinking about all of the other things waiting, the long day is much more tolerable. I’ve thought about that a lot as I get used to these long days. It helps that I’m excited and chose to be here and I’m learning a lot along the way. 

We have fun too. The winery is not a huge space, but it’s big enough that you’d have to have a powerful speaker to hear it from every part of the space. Let me tell you, the Party Rocker Plus does the job. We take turns connecting and playing music, but Samra, our winemaker, plays the most and she is a fan of European house music, so we get a lot of that (luckily I’m a fan!). We also hear a lot of classic rock and some old school hip hop. It definitely helps  you get into a rhythm while spraying down a tank. We also sometimes crack a beer once 6:30 pm rolls around, at the same time a fun aspect of the evening but also a sign that we’re going to be there a while longer. These small morale boosters do make the whole experience more fun overall. On Wednesday we even got pizza! Very necessary to eat well during a 15-hour day of being on your feet.

None other than the Party Rocker Plus. It even has lights.

3 Highlights

Doing additions and measurements for all of the wine that we’re processing. Each day I measure the Brix (sugar level, which tells you how the fermentation is going – less and less sugar means more and more alcohol!) along with the temperature. I also weigh out the things that are being added to the wine (yeast, yeast nutrient, acid), which feels like I’m back in chem lab in college! It’s also fun to see what is going into the wine and why we’re putting more of something in a certain batch of wine than others.

Honestly, the pizza and beer on Thursday night, the longest day of the week. That combo has never tasted so good. 

Learning more about the wine industry from talking to Samra and the other people I work with. She worked for different wineries and wine companies up in Napa before moving down to Southern California and I’ve enjoyed hearing about the different experiences. 

Just some barrels, because they look cool.

3 Things I Learned

Effective use of tools! Find things that will make each task faster/easier/more efficient. Sometimes, however, a task is tedious and it just needs to be done.

Bring food! On long days, we get lunch ordered, which is nice. However, we don’t always get dinner, so although there are some snacks, a real meal is necessary. Weirdly enough, I was not hungry on Friday night. Luckily, I had a sandwich with me, which I didn’t start eating until I realized I hadn’t eaten for eight and a half hours!

A change of clothes is super necessary. On multiple days this week, I found myself soaked. It stays pretty cold in the cellar where we make wine, so it helps a lot to have an extra shirt to change into. Actually wearing the rainsuit, at least the jacket, even when not climbing inside a tank is also key. 

3 Things I’m Looking Forward To

Learning more about the processes involved after all the grapes are processed. There is a lot of maintenance that you have to do with wine until it’s set in barrels or tanks for longer term aging. 

Getting more used to long days. It’s almost like endurance training! I know from working at the PRL at Stanford that the long shifts on your feet are hard at first but you do get used to it. I can feel myself getting stronger too.

Learning more about wine in general. I wrote last week about how inspired I am, and that continues to be the case! I am trying out some new wine podcasts (some from this New York Times article sent by a friend).

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My First Week at Alma Rosa!

Foggy morning in the vineyard.

I started working at a winery this week! Specifically, Alma Rosa winery, located in Santa Barbara County on the central coast of California (almost Southern California). I’m working in the cellar, helping with the actual wine production process. This involves receiving the grapes, processing them (pressing or crushing, depending on whether they are white or red), and monitoring the fermentation process. We also sample and monitor the previous vintage that is aging. This also involves a LOT of cleaning, anything that is touching the wine has to be cleaned, rinsed, cleaned, rinsed, and sanitized. And then rinsed again. And this happens both before AND after using a tool or piece of equipment. 

Chardonnay grapes after all the juice has been pressed out!

So far, it has been such a great experience. I made a pretty big life change to come do this (you can read more about why I quit my job at Microsoft here). After the first week, I can safely say that I am really happy I am doing this. There’s a ways to go before harvest is over (grapes continue to be picked into November), and there are probably going to be some tough days (and weeks) but it’s going to be an amazing learning experience. I think I’ll also have a lot of fun. 

I am enjoying learning so much and meeting new people. I’m feeling extremely inspired about all of the possibilities that are opening up to me after this experience. People keep asking me what I’m going to do after my few months of working at this winery. I honestly have no idea. It’s kind of freeing to not know yet what I’m going to. I’m open to whatever opportunity may present itself to me. However, I also feel like I need to decide (or at least think) about what I want out of life to help guide my decision-making and help me be proactive in going after opportunities. 

When thinking about opportunities, I kind of divide them into two categories: engineering and wine. Both of those have many things nested under them of course, but it’s a useful way to start thinking about the decision. I think doing one of those does not entirely rule out the other, but one of them needs to be the main thing (and an income source!). Right now, I have to say I’m feeling pretty inspired and pushed toward the wine side. I’m surrounded by wine right now, living in wine country and working in a winery. I also just watched Somm III (Somm 3?), and now I’m thinking about all the different possibilities within the world of wine! Winemaking, sommelier, distribution, critic, writer, and so many more. I could even fulfill my 3rdgrade dream and go to culinary school! The options are truly endless. 

3 Highlights

Inoculating the wine! I just love yeast, it smelled like bread when we were activating it and I looooove bread and baking.

Meeting my fellow intern (and everyone working at the winery). It’s been so cool to learn more about what motivates other people to do their first harvest at a winery, and just meet people with different backgrounds in general. At Microsoft I was surrounded by people with very similar backgrounds (and similar to myself as well), so it’s great to just talk to more different people. 

Sampling grapes. When grapes come in, or we go get samples from the vineyard, every now and then we’ll actually taste a grape, which is fun and also a good learning experience when comparing to the data we’re getting from the samples. Wine grapes are so delicious, especially when they’re just about ready to pick. They are super sweet but have other complex flavors going on. 

3 Things I Learned

Don’t wear nice clothes (they will get wet and you will spill wine, along with chemicals as well as plenty of just plain water)

Rainboots (especially comfy ones) are so clutch! I luckily got mine on the day I started, which meant that this whole week I didn’t even have to worry about soaking my shoes. And you don’t have time or energy to worry! There are so many things to think about other than how can I dump/spray this water without getting wet… There’s no point in even trying to avoid that!

Layers are also key! It’s cold in the cellar, especially in the cold room. However, there are many tasks that will get you working and warming up, so it’s nice to be able to take off a layer. In the cool mornings of Santa Barbara County, it was also really nice to have layers when we went to the vineyard to sample the grapes.

Bonus: bring snacks! Being on my feet all day, constantly squeegeeing the floor or sorting through grapes, really worked up an appetite! I prepped overnight oats for the early mornings, and then got granola bars and other snacks for during the day or the drive home from work.

3 Things I’m Looking Forward To

Getting our first red grapes in! I’m excited to see the crushing line

My first long day! It’s been great learning at a slower pace with lower pressure this past week, but I am excited to be super busy and experience the fast-paced wine production environment. I like being consumed and engaged, and I think the coming weeks will be extremely consuming and engaging

Tasting more wine and meeting more wine people! Already this week I’ve loved meeting and getting to know those I’m working and living with, along with an intern at another nearby winery. I’ve also gotten to taste some great wines, and I’m feeling very inspired and encouraged about this whole experience.