Scene opens on a summer evening at a rural Central Pennsylvania winery. Couples and groups arrange themselves on the grass to picnic, drink wine and listen to music. Soon the lawn is a sea of blankets and folding chairs.
While guests settle down in these idyllic surroundings, I’m busy lifting and lugging cartons of Chardonnay, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc to tables set up outdoors. The entire tasting-room staff is on hand to uncork bottles and ring up sales. My role is to replenish supplies as quickly as I can. Such is the life of a winery intern.
I’m exhausted. I’ve just spent 8 to 9 hours cleaning tanks from the inside out, climbing up barrels to top off wine, and organizing the lab. When business eventually slows down, I don’t stick around to hear the band. I hurry home.
To consumers, wine has a romantic allure. Behind the scenes, winemaking is anything but glamorous. Here’s an excerpt from my journal describing a typical day at the winery:
I cleaned tanks #1 and #2 this morning. Actually, the winemaker examined tank #2 and determined it had too much dried residue to scrub clean, so he power-washed it, and while he was at it, he power-washed the floor. I still cleaned both tanks – to sanitize them and get them ready for racking the whites after cold stabilization or transferring the reds out of barrels. We agreed that I would finish this work in the morning to give the floor time to dry before a scheduled tour of the facility in the late afternoon. By noon, I had finished washing the tanks (and getting completely soaked) and moved into the barrel room to top off about 30 barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. I was surprised at how much wine was needed to fill the barrels again. Also, topping off is not as easy as it appears. Barrels are stacked and in hard to reach places. It takes a steady hand and patience not to dribble wine over the side of the barrel.
Dribbling wine… I was good at that. And then there was the time I dropped a glass beaker on the porcelain-tile floor. Oops.
My klutziness aside, I was grateful to learn winemaking first hand several years ago. The experience was eye opening and humbling. I grew to appreciate wine all the more for the labor of love that goes into producing it. Here’s another entry from my journal:
I came into work this morning at 8 a.m. to find a winemaker who had stayed up to 1 a.m. that morning racking and filtering the two Chardonnay wines and still faced the task of moving and emptying 51 barrels of reds. We had intended to accomplish all of this work in one weekend, but we must have been deluding ourselves! It’s not a matter of poor planning; rather, he doesn’t like to keep his reds in tanks for too long before they are bottled. Consequently, he waits as long as possible to process the wines.
Only love would drive a person to forego sleep and devote precious free time to caring for the needs of another. That’s why people say you have to be crazy to be a winemaker. I, for one, am grateful for crazy winemakers. Winemaking definitely is not glamorous, but romantic? You bet!