Gone to the big vineyard in the sky...

Our hats are off to you, Paul Newman.

1925 - 2008

Happy Anniversary to US! (A vintage moment)

September 28, 2002

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

- William Shakespeare
Sonnet CXVI



This is the mead that we home brewed for our wedding. It's particularly relevant just now, as some close friends of my employers asked for a bottle of it to use at their Rosh Hashanah celebration dinner. Not being of Jewish background, I was unaware that honey plays a central role in the celebration of these high holy days, although I am not at all surprised. Honey has been central to so many cultures, because of its medicinal and otherwise exceedingly pleasant qualities. It ties us to the earth, the cycle of life, and brings us joy in all its many forms... not the least of which is MEAD!

Harvest time photos!

Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature

if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.
William Shakespeare - Othello

I was, happily, able to get some really good photos of some of the harvest activities - and without further bordeaux, here they are!

Because the actual harvesting happens by hand, way out in the vineyard, and I have to stay close to the tasting room in order to help customers and get projects done, I was not able to get pictures of the grapes actually being cut from the vines. My pictures start from the moment the grapes arrive at the fermenting barn.

The farm truck brings the bins full of grapes
from the field to the fermenting barn

Sauvignon blanc grapes - the first to
be harvested each season!

The forklift takes the pallet of bins off the truck...

... and carries them over to the de-stemming machine.
(It's the one with the wheels on it just behind the
wooden pallets in this shot.)

The bins are then unloaded from the forklift...

...and the grapes are dumped in
through the top of the chute.



The fruit travels down the conveyor belt,



and ends up piled in a huge stainless steel vat,
waiting below.



The grapes, still sun-warmed from the fields,
begin to foam up.

On the other side of the machine, the stems shoot
out and form a large messy pile...

...which is then scooped into a waiting plastic bin.

Some grapes escape the machine in the
process, but it leaves the swarms of
yellow jackets something to eat!

The de-stemmed grapes are then loaded into
the press, and the juice is immediately
poured into a bucket, and then pumped via
hose...

...into the large stainless steel vats
in which the wine will ferment.

The grape skins and the stems are ground up
and used as compost for the vines.

A tradition I was pleasantly surprised by
is the "harvest luncheon", which is cooked by
Daniel and enjoyed by all the field hands and
employees!

Pasta with meat sauce and fresh basil,
hand-grated cheese and toasted garlic bread - YUM!

After lunch, it's back to work again.
This time, it's a load of pinot noir grapes.
Our vineyard does not grow pinot noir - these
grapes were purchased from a nearby farm
by our winemaker, who is starting his own label.
We will be selling his wine alongside our
estate-grown wines in the tasting room.

The grapes get hand-sorted as they traverse the
conveyor belt off the de-stemming machine, as
small stem pieces and leaves sometimes make
their way through.

Pinot noir grapes taking the plunge...

...into a huge plastic vat, from whence the skins and juice,
called "must", will be transferred into the oak barrels
in which it will ferment. Our white wines are all
fermented in stainless steel to keep them crisp and fruity.
Red wines have the strength to stand up to the dusky flavors
that our French oak barrels lend.

Last but not least, the plastic bins must all be
hosed down and re-stacked for another day
of harvesting! This was my chore, and
I can tell you that grape juice makes
a marvelous organic hairspray... if you
don't mind clouds of yellow jackets and
fruit flies around your head, that is!

Harvest has begun and life is ZANE-y!

Well, here it is, the end of September... and that means harvest time at the vineyard! I don't think Billy Zane (pictured above) has anything to do with it, particularly, however I must admit that when I see him, ripe fruit does come to mind.



And so... ahem... yes... - the grapes used to make white wines are the first to finish "verasion" (or coloring), and the first to be harvested. Today the vineyard field hands harvested the chardonnay grapes which will be used in our champagne. We purchased these grapes from a nearby farm, as we don't grow chardonnay grapes on our own land, and when they were ready for harvesting, our workers went over and did the cutting by hand. Next week we will be harvesting the Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which we do grow on site.



They brought back truckloads of yellow containers full of grapes, and proceeded to dump them into the de-stemming machine. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were not charged up, and so I resorted to using my cell phone camera for the following photo - but you will get the idea. The guy at the top is dumping grapes into the machine, and about midway down, just between the white slats on the fence, you can see the pile of green grape stems that have been summarily separated from the grapes!



Sadly, with the harvesting season comes the fruit fly season. We have wine bottles with just a bit of red wine left in the bottom stationed all over the tasting room - in the bathroom, on the porch, near the register, because if we didn't the clouds of fruit flies would severely limit the customers' enjoyment of the fine beverages we have on offer.

"I've never seen a fruit fly, but anyway -
it's don't ask don't tell!"

On Saturday, the tasting room was so cram-packed with patrons that you couldn't walk a straight line from the counter to the door. All. Day. Long. Yesterday and today have been extreme in the other direction - only a handful of people have come by. Yesterday's most notable customers were five Polish guys, only one of whom spoke English. Made explaining the wine list and describing the wine characteristics particularly interesting.



Today I got sent out on a delivery errand in the vineyard junker - an old Jeep Cherokee. I rolled down the windows and cranked up the radio, and had a blast bombing around the North Fork. I found the wine store fairly easily, made my delivery, and was back at the farm before I knew it. Didn't take long, but broke up the day for me a bit. It's also good for me to get out and get familiar with the local area, since most of our B&B guests have no idea where they are, either, and often ask me for directions.



On a sad note, the vineyard owners just found out that the vineyard dog (the border collie) has liver cancer, and is not expected to see another harvest season. It's making cheerfulness a bit difficult for everyone, and we are all giving her extra love and pets and letting her play with her frisbee as much as she wants. The next few weeks are going to be tough, as harvest is really getting into full swing, and her health is going to be declining more rapidly as the weeks progress. Your kind thoughts are appreciated, and I know they will be winging towards the North Fork when you read this.

TARZAN OF THE grAPES!

Today I did something that most people would wish for if they rubbed a lamp and a genie popped out. I saw into the future.

Or, more specifically, into the "futures". In winespeak, futures are wine orders which are placed at least a year in advance of the actual harvest. At my vineyard, they hold a yearly dinner for the people who are on the emailing list. At this dinner, folks are wined and dined - they enjoy wines from the vineyard and eat delectable victuals prepared by the chef/owner. At this shindig, the invitees fill out order forms (and pay up front, I might add) for wines whose grapes have not yet been harvested.



Once the grapes have been harvested, and the wine has been made, these notebooks full of futures orders must be gone through. All the futures clients must be called personally to let them know that their futures are ready to be picked up or shipped. If they are picking them up personally, we ask that they call us an hour ahead of time so that we can box up the wines they have ordered and have them ready when they arrive.

Mind you, these wines may not actually be ready to drink at this time. The owners of the vineyard send out special emails to let people know when the 2007 merlot, for example, is ready for drinking. Some of the wines that have been bottled will not be ready for premium drinking enjoyment for another several months. But people have already paid for this wine, and we would much rather they pick it up and take it home and let it mature there, so we have more room in our storehouses - harvest is just about to begin!



If the customers ordering futures chose to have them shipped rather than picking them up in person, then we get to what I spent the day doing!

There is a large, climate-controlled building on the property which houses all the cased wines. They are arranged by type and year, and are stacked on huge pallets that rise up to the ceiling. Each pallet of wine is wrapped in super-thick saran-wrap type material, and topped with a cardboard cover. In order to "pull futures", someone has to go inside the warehouse and get down cases of wine in the appropriate year's vintage for the customer.



Never having done "futures" before, I was unaware of exactly what this would entail when the boss gave me a task list which said "ship futures". She did say that "over the next two weeks" we would be boxing up the futures orders to be shipped out.

Yesterday, the first thing I did was to go through the two alphabetized notebooks of futures orders and cull out the ones that the clients had marked "ship". Then I spent the entire day making phone calls to the "shippers" and the "picker-uppers" to let them know that the futures wines were ready to be picked up or about to be shipped.



Today, I took the stack of "shippers" and wrote down a list of how many bottles/cases of each type of wine were being ordered. On a separate piece of paper, I wrote down how many shipping boxes I needed (case boxes, six-fer boxes, two-fer boxes, and the inner cardboard wraparounds which go inside every shipping box). Then I took my lists, and a two-wheeled hand truck, and headed over to the case storage warehouse.

Once at the warehouse, I selected all the boxes I would need, and carted them back to the fermenting room, which is just off the tasting room. The fermenting room perimeter is lined with huge stainless steel contraptions (will take photos tomorrow, perhaps) but the central cement floor is clear right now, so I used that as my staging area.



Then I went back to the case storage warehouse and began "pulling futures". What this means, really, is that I had to search for each type of wine, then search for boxes which bore the specific year being ordered, and then I had to get the right number of cases of each.

Sounds easy, right? Well, not when you consider that some of the pallets that I had to reach were up near the ceiling, and had not yet been unwrapped from their plastic cocooning. I had to play Tarzan, as it were, and climb up on top of staggered pallets of wine, sometimes reaching across the treacherous chasms between the stacked pallets to get the right cases of wine. Some of the pallets were stacked so closely together that even when I was walking on the floor between them, I had to carry cases of wine over my head because there wasn't enough room for my admittedly voluptuous body and the case of wine to fit between the pallets.



Needless to say, I was a ball of sweat within ten minutes - and the entire pulling process took me over half an hour! I put all the cases of wine (around sixteen or so) up near the loading door, and then used the hand truck to cart them (three at a time) around to the fermenting room.

Without going through every painstaking detail, I will just say that I pulled and boxed up every single futures order to be shipped, double checked them all to make sure the orders were perfect, made shipping labels, and charged the customers' credit cards for shipping.... TODAY.

Considering that the boss said that we'd be shipping futures "over the next two weeks", I don't think they've ever seen what TARZAN OF THE grAPES could do with futures once she was set loose on the project.

I can assure you that TARZAN OF THE grAPES never realized she had this many muscles in her body before, and the only reason she knows about them now is because they are SORE.



The truly classic moment, however, came at around 3:00PM, when the boss walked in to the fermenting room and surveyed the neatly arrayed rows of perfectly packed futures boxes, and said...

"Well, this was a pretty easy futures shipment, eh?"

My face tried and couldn't find a suitable expression, and so remained blank.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

As with every job - even a "dream job" - there comes a time when the harsh realities set in and you realize that everything isn't wine and roses all the time. As I am journaling my experiences at the vineyard, I am not going to pamper you, Dear Readers, by only including the happy little butterflies and fluffy bunnies. If I get beat up, you're going to get a few bruises too.

This past weekend was one of the toughest yet (another wedding) - but yesterday really took the cake. My schedule said to come in at 8AM, because we were serving a wedding brunch before the happy couple and their assorted family sailed off into the sunset. I was up at 6AM getting ready for the hour-long drive in.

I got there exactly ten minutes early, put my purse in the tasting room loft, and headed over to the main house to help set up the brunch. They immediately had me carting furniture around from building to building, so that by 8:25AM I was a dripping mass of sweat. I still had to serve food and beverages at the brunch and then work the tasting room until closing time afterwards, and I felt like a work horse that had been lathered up in its traces before the first field had been plowed.

Working brunches could be a very pleasant and easy affair, but for some reason here they are turned into somewhat of a boxing match. Because the owners choose to let the staff work independently instead of giving us our own areas to handle, it's a bit like jousting in front of the King.



Daniel stands at the cooking island in the kitchen, which is right next to the tables we're serving, and he watches our every move. As I walk toward the buffet table to remove an empty frittata platter, Susan darts in from the other side and grabs the platter, bringing it back to Daniel for a refill. Score: Susan 1, Vina 0. As I move to the coffee table to check on the level of the coffee, I see Brenda run to the kitchen and come out with a pot of coffee. Foiled again. When I have a tray full of dirty dishes that I have collected from the tables and am bringing them back to the tiny 3"X3" washing station at the back of the house, the housekeeper steps in front of me and opens the big stainless steel refrigerator door (which completely blocks access to the washing station) and stands there, deciding which milk container she would really rather select.



Instead of the crew working together to get what should be an extremely easy job done efficiently, everyone is scuttling around trying to look the best in front of the boss. When I am faced with situations like this, I tend to retract - if someone else wants to do the thing I was obviously heading over there to do, then I let them. But that results in my standing still, looking as if I don't want to work. Which, of course, is neither true nor desirable considering I've just been made a salaried employee. So what ends up happening is that I walk around the floor, moving from station to station, trying to get something useful done before anyone else cuts me off at the pass. It's a bit off-putting, to tell you the truth.

If the coffee station, the buffet table, and the dining tables were each assigned to one employee, it would all go off perfectly. With a business this small in scale, there is no reason for the staff to go running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Especially considering the fact that there were fifty guests also milling about the room, going between the dining tables and the buffet tables. Utter chaos.

And then there's the issue of the food. Daniel makes delectable, scrumptious food for the brunch, and then spends the next two hours muttering resentfully under his breath that people actually want to eat it. (The nerve of them!) He gets highly offended when the bacon platter is emptied, and flat out refuses to refill it until he deems the precise moment has come, no matter how many brunch attendees have not even had one piece yet. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks the bacon would be better served in small glass picture frames, so that everyone could take one piece home with them and hang it on the wall. If making home-cured maple bacon is so expensive that it causes a financial overload and emotional trauma to actually serve it to your guests, then perhaps, in the end, everyone would be happier with Jimmy Dean sausages. I'm just saying.



At noon, the buffet was over and it was time to break down the tables and get all the rented chinaware back into its green wire cages and get over to the tasting room to begin a six-hour stint.

I love working the tasting room - don't get me wrong. My gripe here is this. I didn't get a lunch break. Not any kind of a break, actually. I worked on my feet from 8AM to 6:30PM without so much as a sit-down. For some reason this is considered normal and acceptable by the owners, and I'm here to tell you that, along with the rest of me, my feet are screaming mad!

When I got home, I hobbled to the couch and my husband brought me a bucket of ice water to put my feet in. Thank goodness this was the last vineyard wedding of the year!

My Two Week Review

In honor of passing my two week review yesterday with extremely humble and self-effacing flying colors (and thus moving from lowly hourly pay to a pretty exciting starting salary), I have invited a few of my old friends over to celebrate.

"But this is mahvelous!
Quick, dahling - call Carey!
I don't vant to celebrate alone!"


"Well, this is just grand. Let's call Jimmy
and see what he has to say about it!"


"Why... why, C.K. Dexter Haven, I told you
she could do it! See here, I even brought
some champagne to toast the event!"


"And you wanna know why I brought champagne?
Well, I'll tell you, C.K. Dexter Haven!"


"Because champagne is a great levelererer."

"We'd have to agree... NYUK NYUK NYUK!"

"Well, I musht shay, your shuckshesh leavesh
me shaken, not shtirred."


"Golly gee damn! You did it!
Cat and I wish you all the best."


"We're so proud of you! We'd be happy to
send over some of our home-made
elderberry wine!"

"Here's looking at your new career, kid."