Think you want to work a harvest?  Want to find out what that really means?  Follow our intern, Sarah Green, as she chronicles her experience as a first time cellar rat.  This entry highlights processing fruit and punching down fermenting wine.

I’ve been dreaming of grapes, tanks, and destemmers, but mostly destemmers.

The cellar seems like a different world from what it was several weeks ago. At the end of a long day, after we’ve scoured the place down for the night, you might think that nothing is even happening at the winery. As usual, you can eat off the floors, the hoses are wrapped up neatly, surfaces are clear, sanitized, and tidy. There is nothing to see.

But it’s the nose that gives us away. Nothing can mask the enormous, heady, distinctive aroma of fermenting wine. We’re still bringing in fruit by the ton most days. Processing it can take a relatively short amount of time if it’s just a few bins or, like a recent Saturday, 13 hours if it’s one of our biggest vineyards. As so often, a huge amount of time goes in to the pre- and post-cleaning of all of the equipment.

Right now, my biggest hurdle is mastering the cleaning of the crusher-destemmer, which must be completely disassembled and reassembled every time we use it, involving Continue reading →