Is this the beginning of the end?

     Or the end of the beginning?  I can barely believe it, but tomorrow is the last day of my winery internship.  There were times I doubted I'd make it!  The transformation from wine-loving desk jockey to winemaking cellar rat was not easy.  I'm not sure what was hardest: the long hours of non-stop physical labor, or feeling like an idiot as I tried to learn a whole new set of daunting procedures with winery equipment.  At least the idiot aspect I was familiar with from my Wall Street internship, but the physical labor part was totally new.

Keeping Zen with tree pose while shoveling grapes into the press

Even intern M, our tireless Wonder Woman, gets pooped from winery work
 (and our previous night's wine dinner!)

     I'm definitely going to miss Napa Valley, especially as I think it's the most beautiful at this time of year, as the leaves on the grapevines begin to change color.  I shot this photo at 6:30AM this morning as I walked around my neighborhood, trying to take advantage of the scenery before I head back to Venice Beach this weekend:

   And because it was a long day of draining and pressing multiple lots of wine, using both our bladder press and our basket press several times, I managed to snap this shot as the moon rose over our estate's vineyards:

 

     And I will definitely miss the crew at our winery: our winemaker, the assistant winemaker, and our enologist, as well as my fellow harvest interns.  I'm the first to take off, but Guru P leaves next week to go on tour with one of his bands.  Guru P has kept us all laughing during this harvest, whether with his physical antics, or his crazy-but-true tales.  One of my favorites is his story of a gig he played with his former band, Hypnotic Clambake, in a dive bar in Toledo, Ohio.  The preceding act was a band of male strippers, who managed to whip the ten Ohioan women comprising the audience into a frenzy.  Not to be outdone, Guru P performed shirtless, donning only his purple spandex running pants and a pair of heart boxer shorts.  As it was the dead of winter in Toledo, he had packed a Russian fur cap with ear flaps, which he gamely sported on his head during his set.  Apparently, the hat made him look like Elmer Fudd, as the ten female Ohioans were now in a lather over Guru P, shouting, "Elmer!  Elmer!"  It's tales like this that can make 16-hour days of tank cleaning, pressing, pumpovers, and rotos fly by.

Our gorgeous basket press.  

Guru P attempts to swan dive into the grapeskin cake leftover from the basket press

Guru P and I battle it out to see who can shovel faster

     After Guru P and I leave, it'll just be intern M and intern T, the seasoned veterans, until they, too, go on with their lives.  The lovely intern M, who's become a great friend, is off to rock climb in Australia.  Intern T will probably work another harvest overseas.  As for me, I hope to find a full-time job in wine sales or marketing, but it's not an easy road.  There have been plenty of successful transitions, however: Allen Meadows was a banker before he became the Burghound.  Antonio Galloni worked on the buy-side at Putnam and Deutsche Asset Management before he took over rating California wines for Robert Parker.  Ray Walker of Maison Ilan in Burgundy and Jamie Kutch of Kutch in Sonoma were both Wall Streeters before turning winemaker.  What is it about Finance that drives people to drink?  

   

     For me, when I first started at Bank of America, my boss, Suzie, encouraged me to learn about wine for our business dinners, as she didn't want me ordering the white Zinfandel for our clients.  Lucky for me, just a few miles away from my Hollywood apartment was a French gourmet market called "Monsieur Marcel," which held weekly wine and cheese tastings: $20 for six wines and three cheeses, with the $20 fee being credited back to any store purchase that night.  On top of that deal, classes were restricted to a dozen people, the atmosphere was laid-back and casual, and our instructor was a fun and knowledgable French guy named Guillaume.  I attended classes every week without fail for three years, meeting two of my closest friends in LA (Jamie and David, who visited a few weeks back) and learning everything I could about wine from Guillaume.  

     Thanks to Guillaume and Monsieur Marcel, what became an interest turned into a love.  During my decade on Wall Street, I thought many times about working in wine.  I thought first of becoming a sommelier and took the WSET (Wine & Spirit and Education Trust) courses, but all my somm friends told me I'd be crazy to give up Finance to work in a restaurant.  Wanting to learn more about winemaking, I got my certificate in Viticulture & Enology from UC Davis Extension, but I knew I didn't want to be a winemaker.  I kept salivating over the buffet the wine world offered, but was too hesitant to take a bite.  Ironically, now all my Wall Street friends tell me that I'm not missing anything and are encouraging me not to return.  

     Well, since my internship ends tomorrow, and I have no desire to return to Finance, you may find me in a town near you, selling dixie cups of my DRC allocation from a van, like a mobile lemonade truck.  Till then, I thank you for following allowing me to share narcissistic therapy with you via this blog.  I'll end with the words of the immortal William Shakespeare, who wrote in "Twelfth Night:"

Some are born grape

Some achieve grapeness

And some have grapeness thrust upon them

     Well, that's what he should have written.  I'm still looking to achieve grapeness.  

Still roto'ing my heart out!

On the 15th day of picking, my true love gave to me...

     Cabernet, Cabernet, and more Cabernet.  In a little over two weeks, I have sorted, roto'd, pumped over, punched down, and cleaned up more Cabernet Sauvignon than I ever want to drink in a lifetime.  On Monday, I spent five hours crouched over a large metal bin at the end of our sorting table, doing quality control on, yes, you guessed it, Cabernet Sauvignon.  Despite a recent respite from the rain, fog, and humidity that was causing rot throughout the Valley's vineyards, we were still seeing some mold on the last blocks of our incoming fruit.  I had first started out on the sorting table, but our winemaker purposely put me on bin duty to pick out any remaining moldy berries.  I don't know how Major League Baseball catchers can squat for innings on end: I felt like the hunchback of Cabernet on Tuesday.  This was basically my view for five hours:  

My view for five hours: five tons of berries

  

     Well, Amen and Hallelujah -- yesterday was our last day of picking Cabernet!  No more 6AM starts, no more tuba music, no more picking moldy grapes out of a bin!  I will miss one thing, though: cleaning the crushpad.  I think it's because crushpad cleaning ensured I was outdoors, working up an appetite for one of Marta's breakfasts as I sprayed off equipment and watched the sun rise over the vineyards.  It also meant I was usually freezing by the time I finished hosing off the crushpad, as A) Napa is really cold in the mornings, and B) I really suck at spraying hoses.  I basically can ricochet a stream of water out of a hose off fourteen different items and end up spraying myself in the face.  One morning, I even managed to spray our assistant winemaker in the crotch with the ozoned water we use for sanitization.  I am sure he will not miss me cleaning the crushpad.

   

     Unfortunately, the end of harvest signals that my internship is winding down, and just as I was getting the hang of things!  Even pumpovers, although still mildly terrifying, don't make me as anxious anymore.  There are plenty of painful things about pumpovers: you have to connect various odd-shaped fittings to a tank containing hundreds of gallons of wine and hope to God you've put them on correctly so that wine doesn't gush everywhere when you open a valve.  You have to be in three places at once: down below to open the valve, up above to hold the hose in the tank and either firehose the wine or to make sure the sprinkler is irrigating the wine properly, and then back down below to take Brix and temperature readings.  Also, if you're doing the firehose method of pumpovers, you have to stand in place, swinging a heavy hose over a dark hole trying to spray every nook and cranny without peeking in the tank and passing out from the CO2 or from the sheer exhaustion of consecutive 12 to 16-hour days.  I've taken to doing yoga poses and singing Broadway showtunes while firehosing.  It may not endear me to my fellow interns, but it does help to pass the time.

                                                   

   My view while firehosing.  Exciting, no?                                              Guru P entertains me at his firehose station

                        

Our assistant winemaker's job during pumpovers!

   

    Even pumpovers, however, are drawing to a close as much of our wine has fermented to dryness.  But wait, there's something even more confusing!  We now will move on to pressing the wine, which consists of even more Cat-in-the-Hat fittings, pumps, hoses, and perfectly coordinated movements in order to drain the wine off its grape skins and pump it into another tank.  This means I'm back on tank-cleaning duty, only now instead of cleaning an empty tank, I'm cleaning one full of grape funk.  

New fittings to learn for draining tanks

My grape funk tank to clean

         

     Today, since it was a balmy 47 degrees in Napa, and knowing myself to be hose-challenged, I decided to don our fashionable yellow rubber overalls to clean my tank so that I wouldn't be sopping wet and freezing when I went outside.  This was a great idea in theory, but in practice, when I tried to do my usual limbo maneuver to climb inside the tank, my rubber suit got stuck on a hook, and I was basically suspended and wedged into the top hole with my yellow-clad bottom flapping in the breeze.  I managed to unhook myself and squeeze in, but when I was emerging from the tank, the thickness of the rubber suit prevented me from slithering out, and I got wedged in again.  Unfortunately, a tour group was walking through the winery just at that moment, and some woman started snapping photos of me like I was an animal at SeaWorld.  I can see her Facebook post now, "Yes, here to our right is the elusive Asian beached whale, rarely seen in captivity..."  Worse still, after successfully climbing out of the tank and getting out of the rubber overalls, I had a hose malfunction when I was cleaning something else and sprayed myself in the crotch anyway.  

Before I got my 15 minutes of fame getting wedged in the tank

     The wine from the tank I was cleaning had been pumped into another tank, but its remaining grape skins went into our bladder press for what is called the press cut.  Basically, the fermentation that happens in tank causes juice to run freely out of the grape berries, and the skins float to the top of the tank.  Those skins still have some pulp remaining, which gets shoveled out of the tank and put into a press.  The wine that comes from the press cut may get blended in with the free run wine, although initially we keep every cut separate.  After the wine is pressed, we have to clean the bladder press by getting inside it and spraying it with steaming hot water to rid it of all grape skins.  I'm sure people pay good money for a steam room with grape vapors at the Caudalie spa in Bordeaux, but I assure you they're crazy.  I've cleaned the press before, and given how bad I am with hoses, you can imagine how sopping wet I get shooting water in a cylinder when I'm inside it.  I thankfully did not have to don the rubber suit a second time today, since Guru P and intern T gamely offered to get inside.  

Guru P and intern T clean our bladder press

Guru P after his grape vapor steam bath

     To celebrate the 2011 vintage, our winery hosted its annual harvest party this past weekend.  It felt good to dress up like a girl again and not have to spray anything with a hose.  I leave my winery a week from tomorrow; I'm the first intern to leave, as I plan on traveling to London, Hawaii, and Paris, as any responsible unemployed person would do.  I have met so many incredible people while in the Valley, and I hope to return, possibly even for good.  I've had a few interviews with wine companies on my rare days off.  Fingers crossed.  Even if nothing comes of the interviews, this experience has been amazing.  I still have no plans or desire to return to Finance, and, ironically yet sadly, the firm that offered me the Finance position the day after my bank shut down just filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.  Perhaps I wasn't so insane to hang up my heels and put on my yellow rubber suit.  Just don't take any more photos, please.  

Me and intern M at our harvest party.  Olé!

Does my OCD make me look like I have OCD?

     When I first landed my full-time job in Wall Street Sales & Trading, I remember one day particularly clearly.  I was watching my bosses, Suzie and Steve: both were leaning back in their chairs, feet propped on the trading desk, laughing hysterically while on the phone with their respective clients.  I realized with wonder, "this is really my job?  Talking all day to clients who have become my friends?"  I knew I had found my job trifecta: an intellectually challenging role; inspiring bosses, peers, and clients; and more than decent pay.  By the time I had left BofA, however, I was 0 for 3 on my trifecta.  The bank was choking on the Countrywide albatross, and the Merrill Lynch merger left me with a miserable political quagmire of two bosses in San Francisco and three in New York.   I dreaded going in to work each morning and finally quit.  

     While I haven't necessarily dreaded going in to the winery, I have lately been racked by fear.  I have developed OCD or paranoia or newbie wine internitis.  I am hallucinating, seeing my winemaker in anything that moves and fearing that he's about to pop out from behind a tank or barrel to point out my screwups, even if I'm not making any.  Just the other day, I was about to rinse out a bucket with water, but I was too afraid to pull the trigger on the nozzle, fearing I would be yelled at for spraying water too near the grapes, or too near some barrels, or too near a pumpover.  Worse still, Guru P had the day off, so I had no reminder to channel my inner Michael Jordan and instead succumbed to my inner Pavlovian dog.  The stress was even starting to affect my so-called life outside the winery: when my friends, Jamie and David, came to Napa from LA for the weekend, I spazzed out on them as we tried to coordinate our schedules.  

     I realized I had to put a stop to allowing my fears and anxieties to paralyze me.  I was exhausted from my OCD around the winery and determined that, if I just acted with plain old common sense, I'd probably be just fine.  I thankfully was able to snap out of being a headcase.  Good thing, as I was about to face a whole new set of issues when I was introduced to rotos shortly thereafter.  

     "Rotos" is our short name for rotating barrels full of grapes and juice, as you can't pumpover barrels.  The barrels all sit on portable spinning wheels, and you have to squat like a sumo wrestler and pull the sides of the barrel toward you in order to set them in motion.  Prior to spinning the barrel, you have to replace the airlock bung with a hard bung, as airlocks allow anything within the barrel to flow out, but nothing to flow in.  This is necessary when wine is fermenting, as copious amounts of CO2 gets released through the airlock, but no oxygen gets in.  

The dreaded roto room: a hard bung is in the forefront

The wheels which help (or hinder) us to rotate the barrels

     The first time I did rotos on my own, I forgot to replace the airlock bung with a hard bung.  I spun the barrel upside down, and wine flew out of the airlock holes, causing rivulets of blood-red Cabernet to stream down the winery floors.  Zoinks!  The first rule of winery internship?  Get rid of the evidence.  I hosed that mess up quickly and replaced the airlock with the hard bung.  I continued on bravely with the rotos, until the hard bung got stuck on my vest and ripped out, causing wine and berries to spew out like grape vomit.  Shitfritters!  I hosed down that mess again, took off my vest, took a deep breath, and continued spinning barrels.  Somewhere down the line, a barrel was not balanced properly on its wheels, and the bung got caught, causing it to rip off and spew wine and berries all over again.  I am getting good at the first rule of winery internship.

     During another roto session, I was spinning a barrel and the hard bung shot out like a cannon from all the CO2 pressure, nearly making me a cyclops.  Forget worrying about getting yelled at, I may become a bung casualty!  After rotoing a few times with Aussie intern, N -- a strapping young lad who works full-time at an Australian winery and is here doing a brief stage -- I felt much better about my own roto difficulties.  I'm not sure if it's N's brute strength or just some crazy Australian technique, but N's managed to rip out a few hard bungs while rotoing.  Even worse, N was rotoing barrels this morning and didn't realize a frog was underneath the wheels until he saw its squashed body as the barrel made its full rotation.  I think I'll take grape vomit over squashed toad.  

Our strapping Aussie intern, N.

Guru P's congo drum technique

My sumo wrestler technique

    

     Since losing my OCD, life at the winery has been much more enjoyable.  I've even realized that I am good at a few necessary tasks, such as tank cleaning.  While I've been in awe of Aussie N's ease at handling pumpover machinery and rotating barrels, I saw the concerned look on his face when our assistant winemaker asked him to clean a tank.  I'm not sure Aussie N would fit comfortably in most of our tanks; also, if you're not flexible or small enough to fit through the top door, you have to slide face-first in through the bottom door, making you feel like Shamu the Killer Whale at a SeaWorld show.  I told Aussie N I'd clean the tank and sent him off to do rotos instead.  I've mastered getting in and out through the top door, thanks to Guru P's instructions and lots of yoga and/or limbo competitions.  

Getting in to the tank through the top door

Doing the limbo to finish inserting myself

 Guru P's contortionist exit from a tank

     And just when I thought I could escape pumpovers during my internship due to Aussie N's mastery of them, I was asked to help "firehose" our large wooden tank.  With most of our pumpovers, in order to get the cap of skins wet, we attach a sprinkler-like piece of machinery to the hose and stick it through the lid of the tank to distribute an even spray of wine.  With the firehose method, you basically become a human sprinkler, forgoing the attachment and instead standing above the tank and hosing the cap down yourself.  With our large wooden tanks, there's nowhere to stand, so you have to perch yourself on the side for as long as the pumpover takes (in my case, 30 minutes) while hanging on for dear life to the tank as well as your wine-filled hose as you blast it at more than a thousand gallons of fermenting wine.  Making it more difficult are the wafts of hot CO2 erupting at your face, burning your eyes and causing you to get lightheaded, especially if you try to peek into the tank to see where you're aiming.   I realized halfway into my firehose pumpover that I was just as concerned about falling off the tank and on to the winery cement floor as I was at falling into the tank and suffocating myself in CO2 and fermenting wine.  

     But, as I mentioned in my last post, I always have to look for the silver lining.  From all the rotos and heavy lifting, I've developed a bit more muscle and just did my first chin-up (OK, I had to get a jumping start, but still...)  So, in my OCD-filled wine world of rotoing squashed frogs, having my eye shot out by a bung, or possible death from CO2 asphyxiation or falling off tanks, I am now able to do one (mildly assisted) chin-up.  

Cab is King

Good thing I picked up some Burg while in LA, as I've needed it to get through our 12+ hour days at the winery this week.  We're finally harvesting our Cabernet Sauvignon, and I'm told we will continue to pick through Halloween.  Also, I had invited Don Ross of Shibumi Knoll out to dinner on the Sunday I returned, intending to thank him for his generosity and kindness by sharing a bottle of Burgundy with him.  As I saw Don approach me at the bar at Tra Vigne on Sunday, I noticed to my chagrin that he had brought a bottle of wine with him.  He plunked it down on the bar next to me, and though I couldn't see the label, I could still make out the "Rousseau" on the capsule.  Laughing, I asked Don to reveal his wine at the same time I pulled mine out of my wine bag.  I guess great winos think alike! We both brought a Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos St. Jacques.  What are the chances?  Of course, Don outvintaged me.  We popped the cork on his 1990, leaving my '02 for my next free moment, which I think will be in 2012.

Great winos think alike!  Don outvintages me in Rousseau.

All is well at the winery, despite my living in fear that any moment I may get yelled at for doing something wrong.  Just tonight, as we were hosing down the crushpad, Aussie intern N sprayed loose two clusters of grapes which had been hidden beneath the scale used to weigh the tonnage of each vineyard block we pick.  Holding the errant clusters, I looked in vain to find the trash can we use for grape detritus.  Asking our oenologist where to throw the stray clusters, I thought I overheard him say, "just huck them into the bushes."  Which is exactly what I did.  Whoops.  He had said, "huck them into the pomace bin" (a giant dumpster in back of the winery used specifically for this purpose), but I misheard him.  Unfortunately, I was in plain view of our winemaker, who gave a shout to raise the dead as I stared at him like a deer in headlights, my throwing arm still raised.  I didn't even have the courage to apologize, but instead scurried off like a hermit crab into the darkness, looking for a place to hide.  Thank God again for P, my fellow newbie intern to whom I owe my stress-reducing mantra, "Bleeeeeeeeeeh."  Still feeling like a moron twenty minutes later, I told P my mistake and how stupid I felt.  "Well," P said philosophically, "the good thing is that you're probably the only one thinking of it now.  In fact, I'm sure they've already forgotten about it."  P, are you the Dalai Lama reincarnate?  P, unbeknownst to him, is now my guru.

I'm not sure there is any such thing as a typical day at the winery, but this week, all our days have started with cleaning the crushpad to prepare for Cabernet Sauvignon and have ended with cleaning the crushpad to prepare for tomorrow's pick.  We've also started pumping over the juice morning and night (circulating the juice from the bottom of the tank to the top in order to keep the "cap" of skins from which we are extracting color and tannin wet), which for me is a scary process, as it involves pumps, hoses, clamps, giant sprinklers, and a myriad of ways to screw up.  This is why for now I've tended to stay outside on the crushpad.  All that aside, another consistency lately has been the hours of endless tuba music our vineyard crew plays while sorting fruit.

On the sorting table

Looking over the fruit

"Mohawks" of mold developing on Cabernet Sauvignon on our Estate and throughout the Valley

I had no idea that Mexicans were related to Germans, but if you heard the same tuba and accordion Oom-Pa-Pa music I've been hearing nonstop, you will start to wonder if Michoacán and Munich aren't closer together on the map.  So far, none of our vineyard workers has shown up wearing lederhosen, but maybe they'll bust that out next week.  The only respite from the Mexican-Bavarian polka is when the youngest of the vineyard crew pops his iPod in the boombox and the occasional rap song is played.  Unfortunately, the last song I heard, blasted at Oom-Pa-Pa levels, was Mickey Avalon's "My D*ck," which includes such culturally thought-provoking lyrics as, "My d*ck -- size of a pumpkin; your d*ck look like Macaulay Culkin."  Thank God there wasn't a tour group walking by.  Needless to say, I think that was a one-time phenomenon and that it is going to be all Oom-PaPa music, all the time, from here on out.

Another thing it seems I can depend on these days is food, and lots of it.  Whenever the vineyard crew picks, a wonderful woman named Marta serves us breakfast and lunch and oftentimes dinner, if the crew is still sorting fruit into the evening.  I thought that being on my feet all day and lifting heavy objects would mean I would lose weight as a harvest intern.  When I stepped on my scale at home this past weekend in LA, I nearly fainted.  How did I gain 5 lbs working at a winery??  I'll show you how.  Check out these photos of Marta's breakfasts and lunches.  In addition, the winery has decided to support a charity bakesale and has provided us with desserts every day.  The following photos are from 24 hours at the winery.  Food is everywhere!  And I even left out photos of dinner.

P grabs a breakfast of champions

M grabs day #2's breakfast: tamales!

The lovely Marta feeds her crew...and adds to my waistline!

Marta serves us coma-inducing burgers 

Just a few of the treats I encountered
in 24 hours at the winery

On a less appetizing note, as we were cleaning our crushpad yesterday, our assistant winemaker asked me to siphon out the ginormous basin of sanitizer we use to rinse out picking lugs and sorting equipment.  Um, is this some kind of intern hazing ritual?  Usually, this tub gets dumped by a forklift.  I seem to be the only intern unable to drive a forklift (P, although a newbie like me, learned forklift skills at a previous job at a windshield factory).  Remember the hotel pool from Chevy Chase's film "Vacation" with the geese swimming in it?   Now you know how I felt when I saw this bin.  Only I wasn't asked to swim in it -- I was supposed to siphon it out with two hoses, my mouth, and a formerly clean set of lungs.  Here's what the water looked like before I began siphoning.

I'm expecting the ducks to come back at any moment

And here's what the water looked like once I successfully got two siphons going (after about 17 separate tries per hose).  Notice that the vineyard crew kept sticking more dirty equipment into the bin.  It's amazing I still want to drink wine after all this.

Intern hazing ritual?

So, does siphoning all these chemicals may mean I now have the world's cleanest lungs or that I am the world's stupidest intern?  Don't answer that.  On a positive note, my clothes, though wine-stained, have a greater chance of getting clean at the winery than they do at my St. Helena rental.  My landlady's washing machine is magical: it turns my white clothes brown, yet my stained clothes remain stained.  Yesterday, while emerging from a tank after cleaning it with hot water, I noticed that my pants were lathered and soapy.  Turns out the machine washing I gave them the night before did a great job of getting the detergent in, but not such a great job of washing or rinsing the detergent out.  I think the machine was considered old during the first moon landing.  So now, whether I am cleaning out a tank, or hosing down the crushpad, or steaming barrels, I have a higher chance of cleaning my clothes while working than I do when actually washing them in a machine.  As my guru P has shown me, I always have to look for the silver lining.

Looking for the silver lining: sunrise at the winery

The Moody Blues

Well, just as I suspected, you gotta be careful what you wish for.  The recent rains have set all winemakers and viticulturalists on edge, not just for the delicate-skinned grapes, such as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but also for the sturdier backbone of the Valley: Cabernet Sauvignon.  While rain isn’t always bad for the grapes, our October storms were followed not by drying winds, but by morning mists, bringing the threat of bunch rot.  Add to that a smaller yield due to unseasonable summer rains which disrupted fruit set, and you're looking at direct proof that Napa does not always have perfect vintages.  Don at Shibumi Knoll in St. Helena said that his Cabernet Sauvignon crop looks to be down 50% after rain in June which knocked burgeoning blossoms off his vines.  Lower yields and higher prices was the front page news in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat: unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily translate into larger profits, as consumers don't want to shoulder the higher costs in this economy.  According to the paper, the price per ton for Sonoma County Chardonnay grapes in 2011 vs. 2010 has increased from $700-$1,300 to $1,100-$2,000; Cabernet Sauvignon has increased from $700-$1,500 to $1,700-$2,300.  Will this drive drinkers to the $3.99 Chilean Chardonnay I saw in Trader Joe's?

Front page of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Speaking of which, we brought in our last lot of Chardonnay late last week, contracted from Carneros.  It was a sad day on the sorting table; the fruit was mushy and damaged from the rain and still on the acidic side, although fortunately we didn't see too much rot.  What a difference from the Estate Chardonnay we picked two weeks ago when each cluster looked as perfect as it tasted.  But in the case of the Carneros fruit, our winemaker decided we had to pick, given what we could salvage now was a better tradeoff than rotten fruit.  We also had to do the same with some of our Petit Verdot, as the some of the grapes were beginning to split.  This led to a rather frantic day, as we had to clean out tanks for the red and white juice, clean the bladder press for the Chardonnay, clean the crusher/destemmer for the Petit Verdot, and basically run around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying not to get in the way of each other.

Starting to see the first signs of damage on our contracted Chardonnay

While the differences between Wall Street and a winery are vast, there are a few similarities: 1) you never know how your day is going to go until you get to work, and 2) you have to be as perceptive as possible or else you are going to get your head bitten off during hectic times.  Regarding point #1, on any given day in the market, you’re just as likely to have a winning day as you are to get your face ripped off; you can go from hero to zero in a nanosecond.  At the winery, I'm never sure what the plan is for that day, and it's plausible our winemaker and his assistant don't know, either.  I’ll walk in the door and be told to clean a tank, only to be pulled off to help clean the press or sort fruit that was not expected to be picked till the next week, only to be pulled off and moved to the bottling line, only to be told that I have to clean myself up and try to look competent because a TV crew is coming in, only to think I’m home free and ready to leave, when I’m asked to stay and clean the same tank I started that morning.

Regarding point #2, I remember during my Citigroup internship there was an intern named Tom who was doing what we were supposed to do; namely, introducing himself to all the employees on a desk.  On the trading floor, co-workers are seated at long desks so close to each other that it's impossible not to know who just did a huge trade or who's having domestic issues or whose herpes symptoms have just flared up again, since you can't help but overhear each other's phone conversations -- there are no cubicles.  So Tom was going from person to person at the much-feared Citi mortgage trading desk and failed to pick up on the fact that Dave, one of the senior traders, was in a God-awful sour mood, probably after having gotten his face ripped off on a trade.  "Hi, I'm Tom!" said our hapless hero, innocently.  "Whoever the hell you are, fuck off!" was Dave response.  Sadly, Tom voted himself off intern island after just a few weeks.  While an experience like Tom's has yet to happen to me at the winery, our day of Chardonnay and Petit Verdot brought back memories of Wall Street internship hell.  My winemaker was definitely Grumpy, and I was trying my best not to be Dopey.  Still, I felt like I was walking on eggshells all day, and any questions I asked or actions I took were met with sharp responses and accusations of doing things too slowly, or improperly, or too hastily.

What a change from the day before, when everyone played nicely in the sandbox together.  Not expecting to pick any grapes till the following week, we whistled while we worked, and I even had time to put together our winemaker's ergonomic yoga ball chair.  M and our new Aussie intern, N, who's here till the end of October, were happily washing bungs together, maybe even having a Bud and watching the game.  Who knows where P & T were, but I'm sure bluebirds were singing on their shoulders, too.  And later that night, we had a team dinner at the Rutherford Grill, bonding happily over good food and booze.

Me catching a quick yoga moment

M and Aussie N sharing good times together 

P eyeing his tasty dinner at the Rutherford Grill

Our team dinner wine lineup (the hot sauce was an excellent vintage!)

The next day was an 180º turn from all that camaraderie, and I was starting to feel downright crabby and defensive as the day progressed.  Thank God for P, who also noticed the uncomfortable atmosphere that morning, which was only getting worse as the day grew longer.  P urged me to remain Zen.  He told me to visualize Michael Jordan going for a slam dunk, so relaxed his tongue is hanging out as he flies through the air, all ease and grace and nothin' but net.  P said whenever I got stressed out or felt like I was bearing the brunt of bad moods just to remember Air Jordan and hang my tongue out while shaking my head around and making a "Bleeeeeeeeeeh" sound.  So, if you see me doing this around the winery, I have not lost all my marbles (yet) -- I'm just channeling my inner Michael Jordan.

It also helped that later that night I met up with a friend in the wine industry and her winemaker over drinks at Rutherford Grill.  They asked how the day had gone, and I explained my frustrations.  The winemaker laughed and admitted that just the other day, he had nearly popped one of his own interns in the face for asking the question, "So, how does the fruit look?"  The winemaker explained, "I know, it seems like an innocent enough question, and in any other situation it would've been a good question.  But can he not see the stress in my face and know that I've been tuning in to the Weather Channel every ten minutes since last week and that 2011 is making the incredibly difficult 2010 vintage look like a paradise and that I am basically FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE FRUIT?!?"  Oh-kay...  So I wasn't going to get any sympathy for being an abused intern that night, but it did feel good to laugh about it.  It was great to hear the winemaker expound on how concerned he is about pursuing perfection -- not to overshoot or undershoot -- and how he's always convinced that it could be better.  At first I thought he was talking about his wines, but he was talking about the fruit.  It just goes to show that the old adage of "great wines are made in the vineyard" still ring true, and that winemaker was part tortured artist and part Tiger Mother when it came to the proper maturity of his grapes.  Perhaps he should try the Jordan technique to de-stress.

Given that our Estate Cabernet Sauvignon has yet to reach optimum ripeness, I got the weekend off again, giving me the chance to fly down to LA for 12 hours and make sure that my place was still intact. Other than 99% of my mail not being forwarded to my parents' home, as I had designated the Post Office to do (are all postal employees at Occupy Wall Street protests?) but instead piled outside my condo door, everything was the same as I had left it.  Our winemaker told us that we'd had it easy up till now and we should expect to get "slammed hard" with multiple blocks of Cabernet picks in the upcoming weeks.  WTF?  Am I in the WWE?  Too bad I didn't pay more attention to that crap when my ex-husband used to watch it, as apparently I might need a Mexican wrestling mask and a folding chair to prepare for what's coming 'round the corner.  As it is, I'm filling two suitcases with Burgundian wines to take back to Napa.  That's the best way I know how to prepare: Burgundy and "Bleeeeeeeeeh."

My refrigerator in Venice Beach looks exactly how I left it last month!

By the pricking of my thumbs...

Well, I'm not saying something wicked comes, but I am starting to worry that I'm experiencing the calm before the storm.  This week's rain pushed back our last Chardonnay pick and the start of our estate Cabernet Sauvignon harvesting to perhaps next week.  As a result, I got this past weekend off, too.  Perfect timing, as A) the weekend was super gorgeous, and B) I was hoping to get off work in time on Friday night for a dinner with Jim Laube, and C) my beautiful friend and former client, Mira, was planning on coming up to Napa with her husband, Joe, on Saturday.  

Jim Laube has written for the Wine Spectator for thirty years and is the magazine's California expert.  When my friend, Don Ross, invited me to fill in for a guest who couldn't attend the dinner, I jumped at the opportunity.  First, I love Don.  Don and his wife, Joann, own Shibumi Knoll, a small production winery (120 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon produced in '08) in St. Helena.  I met Don three years ago when I was dining at the bar at Redd in Yountville.  I was trying to ignore the aggressively flirtatious but unattractive New Yorker on my right, when in walked Don, holding a bottle of '04 Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles.   Thank you, sweet baby Jesus!  Don promptly took the seat on my left.  He graciously offered me a glass of his Leflaive, but we somehow ended up draining the entire bottle together before Don ordered a chaser bottle -- his amazing Shibumi Knoll Chardonnay.  Yes, the way to my heart is through my liver!  

After Friday night's dinner with Don and Jim Laube, I wish I could share with you the secrets to a perfect Wine Spectator score, but Jim, though gracious, wasn't forthcoming.  Anyway, dinner was delicious, and it was a treat to try all the wines served: in addition to the '08 Shibumi Knoll Chardonnay, we had three '08 Cabernet Sauvignons: Shibumi Knoll, Kinsella, and Harris Estate.  I was looped enough to start singing Frank Sinatra with Michael Harris of Harris Estate while simultaneously inhaling my slice of chocolate cake, so thank God the crowd was not of the YouTube generation.  

Friday night's scrumptious menu

Jim accepting his winning golf team's award

Despite being dinged up on Saturday morning, I intrepidly set out to drink wine again with my friends, Mira and Joe.  I'm usually a prodigious planner, bordering on OCD, but I guess being in the midst of a "life transition" is helping me accept the fact that I do not have to have every minute of the day of the next three years figured out, with all costs NPV'd in a spreadsheet.  In other words, Mira, Joe, and I had made absolutely no appointments at wineries on Saturday -- and not just any Saturday, but a holiday weekend Saturday.  However, the three of us not only had a great day tasting at Heitz, Corison, and Elizabeth Spencer, but we also were able to meet up with one of my former L.A. Wall Street colleagues, Mike, and his girlfriend, Sam, and taste together for the afternoon.  

Me and my beautiful friend, Mira, outside Corison Winery

Mira, Joe, Mike, Sam, and I on an impromptu wine tasting tour

That evening, Mira, Joe, and I dined at Brassica, a Cindy Pawlcyn restaurant which opened six weeks ago.  Mira and Joe not only treated me, but they sent me home with their leftovers, too.  Egads!  I really am a mooch!  Thanks, Mira and Joe.  Next time, burgers and beers are on me!

Looking for the three-peat, I decided to go wine tasting in my neighborhood after church on Sunday morning.  Looking at the map of wineries in "Wine Country this Week," I was amazed to see two "appointment only" "wineries" only a few blocks away from my rental room.  Both Ruston and Trespass have vineyards nearby, but neither has a physical winery.  Tastings occur in the backyard of their properties: at Ruston, under a lovely pergola; at Trespass, in a beautiful backyard of what should be a home, if they hadn't spent all their money planting vines (the owner used to camp out in his Airstream on the property, but now lives in a house a mile away from his vineyard).  Both make Cabernet Sauvignons and Bordeaux blends (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon plus Merlot), and both have well-known Napa winemakers (Jeff Ames at Ruston and Kirk Venge at Trespass).  Ruston's wines were lovely: well-balanced and refreshingly restrained for Napa, but still silky and appealing.  My favorite was "La Maestra," named after John Ruston's mother who is a teacher, or "maestra" for ESL students.  Imagine my surprise when I was leaving Ruston and ran into La Maestra herself, who just happened to be in my pew earlier that morning at the First Presbyterian Church of St. Helena!  So, I guess divine inspiration led me to Ruston.  Trespass's wines were immediately approachable and fuller-bodied than Ruston's -- easy drinking Napa Cab.  OK, so I'm no Jim Laube, but you're not paying for a Spectator article, are you?

We are invited to "Trespass" into this beautiful place

Ruston's lovely labels and even lovelier wines

Lest you think all I do is drink, au contraire, mon frère.  How do you think I pay for all that wine?  No, not by mooching!  It's back to life at the winery.  Even though we haven't harvested lately, there is still plenty to do.  One of the scariest jobs for me has to be steaming barrels.  This is done to clean used barrels and consists of taking a baton resembling a medieval torture instrument and generating enough steam to get it whistling like a tea kettle.  Once you've removed the steam baton, you have to close the barrel with a bung, creating a vacuum inside for the steam to penetrate and extract impurities from the wood -- kind of like a facial for barrels.  At our winery, we release the steam after exactly five minutes.  If you let the vacuum go on too long, the barrel could implode.  As if that weren't scary enough, the sound of the implosion is magnified ahundredfold inside the winery caves.  Similarly scary is releasing the steam at the end -- you have to kick the valve open with your foot unless you want to melt your face and hands off.  There is one fun part to the job: when you release the steam, the caves fill up like an uninhaled Clinton bong.  I shot this photo of T playing air guitar as we finished steam cleaning.  OK, so I added some purple haze effects via my iPhone Camera+ app!

Steam cleaning barrels, Jimi Hendrix style

Another recent job has been "barreling down" our wines as we transfer them from tank to barrel.  This involves some Cat-in-the-Hat-esque machinery, as well as a mini maglight, a ginormous metal ruler, a metal filler wand, and mucho hand-eye coordination.  You can tell from P's expression that it's been a long day.

Barreling down one of our first reds with P and our enologist

One of my favorite jobs so far has been lab work.  Who woulda thunk?  I stunk at high school chemistry, and organic chemistry earned me my first C at Stanford...actually, that was my first C anywhere!  When it comes to wine chemistry, however, I can't seem to get enough.   Lately, I've been asked to take grape samples from the vineyard and then run tests for pH and sugar levels.  I've also been pulling samples of last year's wine still in barrel and running tests for sulfur dioxide, which involves using hydrogen peroxide and phosphoric acid in an aeration/oxidation test.  Despite being the least quantitative Asian to have ever walked the halls of MIT, I finally feel I have earned my brass rat ring!  Mom, who wanted me to be a chemistry major, would be proud.  Dad, I'm sure, would just want to know if this means I can change my own oil yet.  The answer is still no.

Turning wine into pretty colors to test for free sulfur dioxide.  Fun with chemicals!