Day Four - Why Sunday is different

For most of the working world, Sunday is the "last hurrah" of the weekend, and thus a very busy day for vineyard tasting rooms. This morning, as I finished the last swallow from my cup of coffee and kissed my husband goodbye, jumping into my little orange pickup truck with one of my Harry Potter books on CD already in the stereo, I really had no idea what lay ahead of me on my trip to work.

In a nutshell, what I found was that the drive from my house to the Long Island Expressway was completely smooth and uncluttered. Most people in my hometown party pretty hearty on Saturday nights, and sleep well through the earlier hours of Sunday morning. All the lights were green, and it was smooth sailing on the highway - all the way out to my exit.

However, once I got off the highway and onto the lovely and scenic two-lane roads that take me all the way to the vineyard, this is what I was looking at:


Yes...

All.

The.

Way.

To.

The.

Vineyard.

I kept hoping against hope that the truck (which was green, and a lot less attractive than the fancy-chromy one pictured here) would make a turn (either right or left, I wasn't being picky) at SOME POINT, allowing me to get somewhere within range of the posted speed limit, which is 45 mph. I was lucky to get anywhere past 35 with this behemoth in front of me.

One brave fool driving behind me decided he was going to get ahead in life and blew past me at the first opportunity, only to get stuck directly behind the tanker truck for the rest of his journey. One step forward, two steps back.

Whether it was sheer luck, or, more likely, my brilliant travel planning, I still managed to arrive at work ten minutes early, time-sucking tanker truck notwithstanding. I worked a full and glorious day, pouring wines for scads of people trying to eke the last drop of enjoyment out of the weekend, and at 6:30pm I finally threw my tired bones into my truck to head for home.

Except... what did I find? My regular route home, which I am usually able to navigate at the posted speed limit without obstruction save the occasional last-minute farmstand hopper, had suddenly become an interminable caterpillar of slow-moving vehicles. Head to tail, head to tail they crawled - SUVs, Jaguars, Porsches, Volvos, all going as slowly as possible, perhaps in the hopes that they could slow time itself by driving slowly, thereby putting off the coming week.

But HEY! Tomorrow is a holiday for the rest of the world (not for me, I am working a full day!), so what have they got to drag their tires about? I know not. What I do know is that the sluggish traffic didn't just affect the two-lane roads, but even the highway. At one point all three lanes of the L.I.E. were crawling along at 30mph, and I nearly wept.



My feet are so sore at the end of the nine-hour day that they literally pulsate. Just pressing down on the brakes and gas causes me to flinch, and I really just wanted to get home already.

Alas, it was not to be. It took me over an hour to get home this evening, and I felt every minute of it.

And now I see how very different Sundays can be, depending on what you do for a living, and where you do it!

Day Three - A New Blend

What I see when I look across the counter

Yesterday was my third day at the vineyard, and it was a new experience among new experiences. It was the first day that I worked the tasting room with another regular employee, and not the owners. Susan is a lovely girl in her late twenties who just happens to be dating the vineyard's winemaker. She is planning to go away to culinary school in a couple of months, which is one of the main reasons they need me.

Up in the loft

We worked really well together, and I learned quite a lot about the wines from her. Since her boyfriend is in charge of actually blending the wine, which determines its ultimate flavor, her knowledge leans more toward the composition and grape qualities than it does toward the farming aspects of the vineyard. I am finding that everyone has their own area of expertise, and it is beneficial for me to be able to spend time with each of them and tap into their well of knowledge.

The tasting room - behind the counter

One of the regular projects involved with running a tasting room is keeping the bags stocked (you can see them in the above picture, on that small table next to the loft ladder). In order to keep the bags stocked, they need to have wine label stickers applied, and an information card stapled on. Susan and I sat and finished 250 bags in less than ten minutes. Because there are so few employees at the vineyard, speed is just as important as accuracy when it comes to job completion. The tasks may seem small, but they are myriad - and customers can walk in at any moment of the day, so the sooner you can wipe the glasses or prep the wine bags or dust the bottles or sweep the floor, the better.

The rear window... sans Jimmy Stewart

During the day, some VIP folks from a well-known wine magazine came by for a tour and lunch with the owners. While I was helping to serve breakfast, I saw the B&B housekeeper setting a beautiful table on the deck outside for the lunch. There were vases of cut flowers from the gardens, and sparkling flatware and china. I was dying to know what Daniel was going to cook for them, but I never got the chance to find out. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was delicious.

The aptly named Butterfly Bush, just next to the tasting room door

When Brenda came by the tasting room after they had left, she said they were talking about doing an article on the vineyard in an upcoming issue of the magazine. Exciting stuff for me, although I have to say that the walls of the tasting room are lined with articles from the New York Times and other major publications, so they are pretty well used to the attention by now.

On deck: candle holders made from our wine barrels by a local artisan

One of the high points of my day was when Daniel and Brenda came in to the tasting room and brought some of their close friends with them. Brenda told me that she had brought the bottle of the mead that my husband and I made (I gifted her a bottle of our wedding mead, a 2002 vintage) when they went to their friends' house last night, and they fell in love with it.

Weathered wood buildings, circa 1880

Their friends (whose names escape me now) are a Jewish couple, and they said that honey plays a major role in the celebration of Rosh Hashana. They've decided that our mead is a delicious and unique way to use honey for that honored occasion, and they asked if they could buy a bottle of our mead. I said that by law we cannot sell it, but that I would be happy to barter with them - a bottle for a bottle. And so it is agreed!

Waiting for the customers to arrive and play ball

I'm really excited, because our humble little home-made mead is making rather a splash with the "bigwig" wine folks. According to the government, we can make 200 gallons a year for our own consumption and for gifting to others, but we may not sell it without getting a winery license. Most of the meads that you find for sale in a liquor store are just wine with honey added to them, and are not "true meads".

View from the front door

In my whirling imagination, I wonder if it would be possible to become the "head mead maker" at the vineyard. Now, wouldn't that be something?

A tasting table, complete with water jug, spit bucket,
wine lists, and more barrelwood candle holders of course

Day Two! Oy, my aching feet!

Day two, in which Vina learns several new things.

Firstly, standing on your feet for nine hours a day on hardwood floors HURTS! Even though I bought special flats with Dr. Scholl's gel insoles built right in, I am literally hobbling from my truck to my house at the end of the day. I suppose this is just more incentive to lose some weight, because all that extra I'm carrying around these days is just extra agony for my feet when all's said and done.

Secondly, some people are easier to work with than others. Some people are friendly and willing to acknowledge that when you have been doing a job for only, oh, say, TWO DAYS, you're bound to make a minor mistake or two on the odd occasion. These easy-going types are happy to point out that you might want to try doing things another way, but they also express their support and understanding that starting a new job is stressful and that one is likely not to be good at everything right off the bat.



Some people are not. Some people hover around waiting for you to make one little blunder, and then they point it out to you in the most rigid way possible, and in a way most designed to make you feel like a complete idiot. Some people think they are so perfect that they must intrude on any little task you are trying to complete, and show you how much better they do it. They are faster, cooler, and better at everything than you are, and how dare you even try to accomplish anything while they are present, because you have no hope of ever being as good at it as they are!

Lucky for me, I have already discovered who is the former and who is the latter in my new workplace, and can therefore conduct myself accordingly so as to garner as little attention from the latter as possible.

The tasting room got really busy today - lots of wine got tasted, and lots of wine got bought! It gave me a chance to stretch my wings a bit and practise giving the wine list description to more people. I am getting more comfortable talking about the wines because at the end of the day, Barbara lets me taste one or two of them. Now I know what "notes of coffee and chocolate" mean in a merlot. I also know what "a flavor that is more reserved" is like, compared to an "aggressive" flavor. Another bonus is that more people = more tips! Yay!!!

I am also discovering that I don't hate white wine. I always thought I did, and now I realize it's probably because all the white wines I have tasted previously were oak matured, which gives them a flavor that I don't like. All the wines we make are fermented in stainless steel only, so the flavors are bright and crisp and smell very fruity, even though they are dry wines. I like this!

Another thing I learned today is that red wine contains histamines, which come from the skin of the grapes. Often, when people get a headache from drinking red wine, they blame the added sulfites when actually it is the histamines that are causing it. In the 1970s and '80s, winemakers in the USA were pretty heavy-handed with sulfites, and it did cause a lot of headaches. But now they are realizing that using only minimal sulfite additives still protects the integrity of the wine, and isn't migraine inducing.

Tomorrow is Friday, and that is supposed to be a "BIG DAY" for wine tasting. I can only imagine how loud my feets are going to be screaming by tomorrow night!

Day One!

I pulled into the vineyard driveway this morning just about fifteen minutes early. I am slowly getting a feel for the drive time, which is nearly an hour, and no longer have to use my Google map directions that I printed out on my first run.

This morning the sun was out, and the birds were singing. I had set up the tasting room with Brenda, and we had headed over to the B&B where she was showing me the ropes in the kitchen. Suddenly, she looked out the screen door and shrieked, "The birds! Look at the birds! I'll be right back!". For one awful second I thought I was going to have to round up the school children and go running madly through the streets.


Before I could think to ask Daniel (who was busily searing mouth-wateringly aromatic home-made breakfast sausage patties in a cast iron skillet) where she had gone, there was a loud BANG-SWOOOOOOOSH! sound, closely followed by a minor explosion similar to that of an M-80. I jumped out of my skin and then laughed as I saw Brenda running around the edges of the vineyard with a starter pistol. The blackbirds all took off at once, swooping away in great clouds to go feast on someone else's nearly ripened grapes.

When we carried the breakfast (which consisted of herbed scrambled eggs, the aforementioned home-made sausage patties, grated zucchini fritters, freshly baked corn bread, and peach and strawberry smoothies made with locally grown produce) in to the B&B guests, they were laughing about the bird gun too, saying they thought someone was setting off fireworks in the streets.

The B&B has four rooms, and last night two of them were occupied. The two couples at breakfast this morning were very friendly - one older couple who had included us on their world tour, and a young couple who lived in Manhattan that were just on a little summer getaway. Part of the package for guests staying at the B&B is a free wine tasting (a selection of four wines) at the tasting room, and the young couple came by for their tasting as they were checking out.

While I will be assisting with breakfasts in the B&B, my real "domain", as it were, will be the tasting room. It's lovely, with big windows and a raw wood interior - naked beams, cathedral ceiling and loft. It looks out on a lovely grey weathered deck overhung by a matching pergola, and beyond that the vineyards roll away into the distance. Teak chairs and tables dot the deck, making it a perfect place to sit and enjoy some wine on a beautiful day. Inside, there's soft music playing (today's selection included Emmy Lou Harris albums) and an oversized restroom is available for road-weary travelers to freshen up.

Where I stand, behind the bar, there are racks of wine for sale and tasting, and a small refrigerator where the white and rosé wines wait to be tasted. Behind me, a wooden drop-down ladder leads upstairs to the loft, where supplies, the stereo, and my personal belongings are stashed. There are also two windows behind me, with lovely green pottery and plants on the sills, allowing a refreshing cross-breeze to cruise through the building.

Today, the first thing Brenda showed me was how to set up the tasting room to make it ready for opening. This involved filling water pitchers to set out on every table - for palate rinsing or rinsing glasses between tastes. There are silver "spit buckets" or "dump buckets" which must be placed out, as well as laminated wine menus and lovely curved candleholders hand-crafted from wine barrel staves, which are for sale.

During the day, in between tastings, glasses must be run through the dishwasher, then polished and placed back on the shelf. If bottles of wine are used up, new ones must be opened and the empties put in the recycling box. A close count of all the wine is performed at the beginning and end of each day, and recorded in a book.

In the middle of all this business stuff, though, the customers just keep coming through the door. And they not only taste wine, but they buy loads of it! One couple came in, tasted four or five wines, and bought over $200 worth at a pop! The main thing to remember when doing a tasting is to start off with the lighter, or whiter, wines and move along toward the reds and heavier wines so that the glass doesn't get cross-contaminated with flavors. We regularly moved from Chardonnay to Rose to Table Red to Merlot. If a customer only wants to taste white wines, then we'd start with the lightest and move to the most concentrated flavors.

I was surprised at how many people came to the tasting room with small children in tow - lucky for them the owners' dog, a black and white border collie, was happy to go outside and play fetch with her tennis ball as long as the kids were willing to throw it.

"Ball? Did someone say ball?"

I was very straightforward with the customers today, and told nearly everyone that it was my first day, especially when they asked me questions that I had no idea how to answer. Especially with food and wine customers, one should never try to posture. They'll sniff out your weak points and destroy you. The best bet is always to admit if you don't know something, or if you made a mistake about something, because then you're in charge again and can move forward.

Today's customers were all very gracious and friendly, and seemed glad to be part of my first day there. I listened to Brenda and Daniel as they explained the wine list to each customer, and by the middle of the day they let me try it on my own. By the end of the day, I was able to greet customers, explain the wine list, pour their tasting selections, and ring up their transactions (even credit cards!). The end-of-day cash register and credit card machine procedures will take a while longer to internalize, but I feel pretty proud of myself for being able to handle sales the first day in.

At the end of the day, I asked Brenda how she thought I did, and she seemed really happy with the way everything went. She said she found me easy to work with, and felt we were "simpatico". I felt the same. I am looking forward to becoming really familiar with the wines and knowing my stuff, so she doesn't have to babysit me - and I'm sure she is, too, as there is so much work she could be getting done if she didn't have to be training me. But this is always the way at the beginning of a career.

There was a little excitement in the middle of the afternoon when one gentleman was walking up to the tasting room and the winemaker's dog, a boxer, ran up and nipped him on the back of the leg. Brenda apologized, and thank heavens the man didn't make a scene about it, but that could really have been a bad situation if things had gone differently! Luckily the bite didn't break the skin, but it could have been a child that got bitten, or an elderly customer, or a million other things. The dog was immediately tied up and I didn't see it running loose for the rest of the day.

"But you SAID it was a TASTING ROOM!"

Well, I got to work this morning at 9am, and didn't leave until 6pm, which means I didn't get home until 7pm. And all I had to eat today was a granola bar at about noon (eaten standing up - there is no "lunch break" there), so I am going to mosey down to the kitchen and stuff my face with something.

All in all, I'd say today was a smashing success. Oh, and I made $20 in tips today, too! That will improve as I get better with my shtick, no doubt.

*Please note that the photographs I have used so far in this blog were not taken by me. Once I have completed training, I intend to take my own pictures, but it's impossible to do so just yet. The pictures I'm using now are just for illustration purposes - or to make you snort your soda.

Tomorrow, the journey begins

There are very definite stages in life, but for some reason you usually can't see them clearly until one chapter has closed and another has opened.

I have just been hired to work at a vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island. When I went for my first interview, I had no idea whether it was going to be an hourly job of standing around dressed like a penguin, serving wine and then going home again, or whether it might be a chance to become an integral part of the living, working, breathing thing that is a vineyard. I feared the former, and longed for the latter.



It was, happily, the latter. The vineyard owners are a wife and husband team. I'll call them Brenda and Daniel. They are into wine making- heart, body, and soul. After owning two successful restaurants in New York City for more than ten years, they decided to sell everything in order to put their life into the vineyard, and now they are living their dream. This dream of theirs includes a lovely Bed & Breakfast as well as the vineyard and wine-making facilities. (Can you say original wood floors from the 1800's? I thought you could!)

Daniel is a chef, and he prepares the scrumptious B&B breakfasts. He also prepares dinners for the special events they host throughout the year, and from what I gather he focuses on the "business end" of business. Brenda focuses on the vineyard itself, working her organic magic on the vines, prepping the compost, managing the field workers, making sure that everything is moving in harmony towards the goal of the all-natural production of fantastic wines.

When I sat down with them yesterday to finalize the hiring process and learn about their plans for me, I found that I will indeed have an integral role at the vineyard, no penguin suit required. Basically, they've both been working seven days a week from the very beginning, and have not really been able to leave for vacation or extended business travel because there is no one else on the premises that can run things while they are away. That is going to be my job.

I'm going to be hosting wine tastings in the tasting room, checking guests in and out of the B&B, doing bookkeeping, keeping the mailing lists up to date, keeping everything clean and stocked, helping as needed with the harvesting process, working at special events, running errands, delivering wine to stores and restaurants, and whatever else they need at the moment. One of the best things about a small family business is the variety - never a dull moment, never stuck doing the same thing day in and day out. I'm also excited to report that Daniel offered to teach me to cook the B&B breakfasts - BONUS!!!

Most of the responsibilities they mentioned are already in my skill set - all except a knowledge of the wines themselves and how they are made. This is going to be my biggest and most important challenge, so that I can discuss our wines intelligently with customers, whether they are first-time wine tasters or experienced connoisseurs. There are two goals at the forefront here. One: For the guests to enjoy themselves. Two: For them to buy lots and lots of our wine!

I feel pretty confident about my selling skills. Waiting tables for all those years taught me a lot about talking to people, making them feel comfortable, encouraging them to try and buy. However, I have a lot of studying ahead of me where the wine is concerned. I need to know what bouquet each wine has, what grapes were used in the making, the prices per bottle and case, and a myriad of other facts and fancies about wine making in general, and our wines in specific.



All this doesn't scare me, though. It whets my appetite! I am anxious to get started learning, and to get my hands dirty. These folks don't know it, but they've just hired the hardest working person they've ever met. The passion I feel for this new journey, this new stage in my life (for I see now that's what it is) lets me know that I am on the right path.

After being in the corporate world for so long, with all its paper-pushing, meaningless, soul-killing bureaucracy, I have been starving for the breath of fresh air that this new opportunity represents both literally and figuratively. I have done with working for the machine. I need to work in order to live, yes. But I no longer need to give up my soul, my creativity, or my self respect to do so. This vineyard is going to give me back every bit of spiritual nutrition that I pour into it and more, and I plan to give it all I've got.

Grass and manure and grapes and dirt and hard work sound like heaven to me. So do bottles and wooden barrels, sunshine and clean linens, dogs and cats and smiling people. Growing things and harvesting them, crafting a living product which brings good cheer to people all over the world... what could be better?

I think I have found the place I was meant to be. Tomorrow is my first day at the vineyard - I'm diving in!