Turkovich Wine Harvest 2016 Week 3

This Week At The Wine Gym
A Rite of Passage for a Wino

August
Week 3




This week by far was the most physically challenging, and it's going to get harder!
 When looking for harvest internships, and reading through a few articles on other people's experiences, I knew that one aspect of this endeavor was going to test me physically. This week I've gone in and out of feeling amazing, to coming home so drained that as soon as I got home I melted onto my bed like butter.
Well prepared and fit you may be, but get ready for one of the physical tests of your life if you decide to join a wine harvest.

Monday
Aug. 16th 2016
There are a few wines currently fermenting which means we need to check the carbon dioxide meter to insure it is safe to be in the cellar.
A note from the winery:
During and after harvest, fermentation operations will take place in the cellar.  A by-product of the process of fermenting wine grapes is carbon dioxide. This colorless, odorless gas can displace the oxygen in the immediate area where the process occurs. Employees who enter tanks/fermenters monitor the atmosphere to insure that acceptable levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide are maintained.
It is not uncommon for carbon dioxide to migrate to low-lying areas and places that do not have adequate natural ventilation in the cellar.
What are the symptoms of carbon dioxide exposure?
Shortness of breath, headaches and a stinging sensation in the eyes and throat are some of the sign that you are in an area where carbon dioxide is present.

Reading taken from right outside of the cellar

Reading taken during the afternoon. The morning the reading read high since the doors of the cellar were closed all night; when the reading is high all doors must be opened immediately to aerate the room.

A Daily Work Order 

Now that there are some red and whites fermenting, the temperature and Brix must be taken daily to see how the wine is progressing in the fermentation process. 

There's always lots to do at a winery! Since there are no grapes coming in today, that means there is time to sanitize tanks so there is a safe and clean place for incoming juice to live in. 

Why winery sanitation? 

The winery wants to control spoilage causing microorganisms, and improve quality of course! Protecting the integrity and equality of the product is essential to the winemaking process.  If the equipment or anything the juice or must touches isn't sanitized properly, the wines' delicate flavors and aromas can be lost.

The winery also wants to:

-Improve consistency

-Improve product safety

-Improve aging potential

-Reduce chemical use in wine

Tuesday
Aug. 16th 2016

Syrah Vines 
The excitement was overwhelming! I finally got a chance to frolic through the vineyards and help out with some harvesting. This part of the job is some seriously hard and backbreaking work.
Harvesting grapes is also a cat and mouse game! I am the mouse, the black widows making their comfy home among the vines are the cats.

Happy Snipping
I got what the winemaker refereed to as training wheels for harvesting.

Winemaker and viticulturist Chris Turkovich says, "what we want are about 4 fingers between each set of spurs."

But why?

Lodi Growers does a wonderful job explaining,
"Through pruning, growers select buds for channeling annual grapevine growth into foliage. In effect, pruning integrates the affects of vineyard site, vineyard design, and past vineyard management on seasonal, above ground grapevine growth. In so doing, it sets the stage for fruit production at the beginning of each growing season.
At the same time, pruning governs the partitioning of seasonal growth between vegetative growth (stems and leaves) and reproductive growth (clusters). It does so through bud number. Retaining more buds increases cluster growth relative to stem and leaf growth, while leaving fewer buds achieves the opposite effect.
Due to these portioning effects, pruning is a powerful tool for achieving growth balance, which is discernable as 14 to 20 leaves per shoot with two clusters. Growth balance promotes both consistent grape quality and operational efficiency. When a vine has too few buds, vines produce excessive leaf and stem growth and too few clusters. In this undercropped state, fruit and cane wood quality is diminished and fungal disease susceptibility increased. The reverse condition, with too many buds, results in too many clusters and too few leaves to support them. For such overcropped vines, fruit and wood ripening are impaired, tolerance for stresses is limited, and in severe cases, vine growth capacity and health declines.
Pruning also influences the positions of shoots in space through bud placement. Retaining more buds within a specific length of vine row increases shoot density, while leaving fewer buds has the reverse effect. Under most circumstances, a shoot density of 5 to 6 shoots per foot of cordon is best. A shoot density in this range facilitates the exposure of most leaves to direct sunlight, exposure of clusters to dappled sunlight, and the canopy interior to air movement. Due to its affect on shoot density, careful pruning is crucial for optimizing the configuration of canopies and the microclimates within them. Simultaneously, it facilitates vineyard operations, such as shoot thinning, spraying, and hedging. All of these influences contribute to production consistency and efficiency." ~LodiGrowers

Check out more on grapevine features by Lodi growers 

Picking a row of Grenache to blend with the Alicante Bouchet

Pressing Alicante
Part 2 of the wine gym workout.....
The Alicante has just about finished fermenting, which means we must drawl off the juice and transfer it into a tank.  This device, pictured below, sucks out as much juice as possible while leaving behind the skins.

Sucking the wine out of the bin and pumping it into a tank. 

I look happy now, but trust me this was a workout of a lifetime!
What I'm doing here is pressing any remaining juice from its skins, so we can extract as much juice as possible.

stomp, stomp, stomp
 I imagine this is what being in quicksand feels like.

Wednesday 

Aug. 17th 2016

Pressing Albariño

No destemming on this grape variety, these are going to be pressed whole cluster.

Whole cluster pressing this wine helps prevent excessive oxidization, which is Albariño's enemy! Even when pressing, little air bubbles can get in the pump if one is not paying attention. Bubbles means oxygen! As the wine is pressing we want to pump the juice into the tanks in a timely fashion; minus the air bubbles of course. 

  It's key to preserve natural freshness and the intense aromatics this variety gives off.  If the winemaker could, she would bottle this as soon as possible to keep those beautifully aromatic aromas right in the bottle where they belong, or right in your glass would be even better said! 

Adding enzymes to the Albarino about to be pressed. 

What to do with clusters that fall out of the press when they were dumped in? Well....I snack on them =D 

Thursday 

Aug. 18th 2016

Doing punch downs on the Grenacha and Syrah; the cap on these are hard to break.

Fermenting Grenacha

Ready to take temperature and Brix readings on the fermenting reds. 

Fermenting Syrah

Friday

Aug. 19th 2016

Friday's should be easy right? Wrong! Punching down the cap on the currently fermenting reds had my heart beating fast....doing push ups seems like cake compared to this. 

After punch downs, during, whenever....there are more tanks to sanitize. 

And so the workout for this week ends; harvest still isn't even in full swing, but to keep me going this is what I have found that is key!  

-Getting enough rest

-Stretching in the morning and whenever my body starts to fill tight has helped immensely

-When lifting heavy things, bend your hips and knees to squat down to your load. Do not bend forward to lift! As someone who has had back problems due to a car accident, and has suffered from sciatic pain...I'm in constant worry one of these days the pain will come back, but so far...properly lifting things and keeping a good posture has kept my back pain at bay. 

Cheers! and happy harvest =)