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!