Thank God for rain!

Winemakers and vineyard managers may curse me for welcoming the rain, as there's always the chance that rot will set on unharvested fruit, but I say: Amen and Hallelujah!  I had my first day off in 10 consecutive 12-14 hour days at the winery.  Once the grapes have gotten a chance to dry off, we'll bring in our last block of Chardonnay (contracted from Carneros), and then the Cabernet Sauvignon can't be too far behind.  We've already brought in a small lot of Sangiovese and Cabernet Franc, which were our first red grapes.  This, of course, means having to learn a whole new set of equipment and processes...just when I was starting to understand what the hell we were doing with our white grapes!  Oh well, as I said, thank God for the rain.  This gives me the chance to introduce you to my fellow wine interns.

Funneling Sangiovese berries to be fermented in puncheon

First off, I am not the oldest intern!  It seems like my winery hired the geriatric crew.  It's hard to believe, but I am the second youngest.  T, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, is actually not 24 but a worldly 26.  He still has the most experience of all of us, having worked 5 harvests in 2 years, alternating between the northern and southern hemispheres.

T showing off our bladder press for our Chardonnay

Then there's M, our 5'2 1/4", 37-year old girl wonder.  Rock climber, skier, and stone carver, she may look like a pixie, but the girl's got muscles.  Having resided in Oregon's Willamette Valley, M has a few harvests under her belt.

A close-up of the spritely Miss M.

Oldest in age but youngest at heart is P, aka Peewee or P-licious.  He's a rockstar on the guitar and on forklifts and, like me, is also new to this cellar rat gig.  

P showing off his guns

P-licious emerges 

What's great about a harvest internship is that all four of us will be out of a job when harvest ends; in other words, there's no intern celebrity death match to see who's the last one standing.  Contrast this with Wall Street internships where you're in competition with your peers for just a few available jobs on just a few sales or trading desks.  Another huge contrast is that I actually feel useful at the winery.  Stupid and clumsy, yes, but still useful.

During my stint at Citigroup in the summer of '02, there were 20 interns fighting for a limited number of seats.  As we didn't have our Series 7 license to answer phones and talk to clients, we interns were basically lemmings who listened in on phone calls and did our best not to annoy the person we were shadowing.  The two most useful things interns could do were: A) taking food orders and B) being the butt of trading desk bets.  For example, one of my friends and fellow interns was offered $2,000 (everyone on the desk chipped in to up the ante) to shave off just her left eyebrow (she didn't).  Another bet was for an intern to eat everything in a vending machine in one hour without vomiting.  I guess at our best, we were a cheap form of entertainment.

While neither Wall Street nor a winery is exactly PC, it did make me laugh the other day when our winemaker, F, didn't want to use off-color language in front of M & me, us being the female interns.  Given Wall Street trading desk language, I guffawed and told F not to worry.  F's naughty words were "goat balls."  Contrast this with my experience at Citi when Bill, a derivative salesman whom I had shadowed, saw me boarding an all-female bus of interns and Citi employees, and asked me what was going on.  When I replied we were all headed to a women's mixer, Bill spat in distaste, "another fucking chick lesbo event?  What the hell is wrong with this place?" before stalking off.

Oddly, I ran into Bill years later at a bar in Manhattan.  The passage of time had not improved his political correctness.  For some reason, he asked me what size dress I was wearing, and when I replied "6," he was offended.  "6?!  Whaddya mean a 6?  There's no way you're a 6!  A size 2, maybe, or a 4, but you're not a 6!"  Thanks, Bill...I had no idea 6 was synonymous with heifer.  That's another good thing about the winery: everything is oversize.  I put on a pair of waterproof overalls the other day, and you could've fit Chaz Bono in there along with me.

This day off made me realize that, although it's been exhausting and humbling at times working as a wine intern, I'm pretty damned lucky to have gotten a spot at my winery.  I got a chance today to tour Bond and Harlan Estates with their amazing viticulturalist, Mary.  As we toured through the caves, I noticed the interns at both places were unsupervised and seemed perfectly at ease: this definitely wasn't their first rodeo.  At my winery, our winemaker, his assistant, and our enologist have all taken turns showing me the ropes, and I'm grateful.  We all gotta start somewhere!

The view from Harlan Estate

Harlan's tasting room

One pour is more than my hourly wage!