A Day in the Life of an Assistant Winemaker

Written by: Assistant Winemaker Christopher Southern

          I recently saw a youtube animated video in which the aspiring winemaker said that winemaking is roughly 49% cleaning stuff, 49% moving heavy stuff, and 2% drinking beer (shout-out to Michelle from Thacher Winery for showing me the video).  I'm here to tell you that if you substitute some of the cleaning and heavy lifting for forklift driving, this is 100% true!  As an aside, I think I actually got, 'Forklift sick' last week- you know like when you've been on a boat all day and then you're standing on the beach and everything is still moving?  Exactly like that... but from the forklift.

            Anyway, most of my day is essentially quality control or, more specifically, making sure that our wines stay clean and ensure they are delicious between the cellar and the bottle.  Lately, we've been preparing for a round of bottling this week in addition to harvest.  Thus, I’ve been spending lots of time making sure that the 2011 wines can be left alone to play with each other for the duration of harvest.  This entails: LOTS of forklift driving (barrels), LOTS of pumping (barrel to tank/tank to barrel), LOTS of cleaning hoses and tanks before I do the pumping (which is actually done with the pump), a bit of lab analysis (I do all the pipetting and beakering at Cass)and sometimes some mixing (again with the pump). Pretty much, I mostly drive the forklift and use one of our pumps. All day. Since we've started filtering wines Monday to be ready to bottle on Thursday, I've been pumping things through a filter but still...pumping. It took me twice to get the filter assembled correctly yesterday. It’s hard being the new guy.

        Mixed into the forklifting and pumping are the conversations between Lood and I where each of us try and figure out which scientific language the other is using since we were trained in different countries that use different measurement systems.   Also, I've been spending some time traipsing around the vineyard testing sugars and pH on our grapes.  Steve even bought a pH meter that hooks up to my iphone, pretty neat.  I actually  really enjoy the vineyard part of the job until the thermometer hits over 100.

           While scarfing down a sandwich during lunch, I usually check/return emails, enter the day’s records and google conversion factors (again- Lood uses liters and I use gallons).  No one ever emails me anything fun, but I can always hope.

            BUT, folks, the big harvest show is finally here!  After this week, its all about the press, yeast, and bacteria until November- or dryness- whichever comes first.  All these things are pretty much beholden to the forklift.... and one of the pumps.  Steve just told me that I was in charge of beer for the cellar until harvest is done…  It's always good to know that you can excel at something at work!

This may be entertainment geared towards us wine geeks but here is the video if you want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcjVfXBxvdg