Another Fun Day At The Winery

Whoever said making wine is romantic, has never spent time in a winery. Here’s a rundown of what I did today. Dropped Oscar off at school and then drove 40 minutes up to the winery. When I got there it was time to do the morning punch downs of the Furlong Estate Vineyard Syrah that is currently fermenting. Then it was time to check the amount of sugar left in the must and see what temperature it was at. The thermometer read 102°F! Yikes, that’s way too hot for fermentation. I dove my hand into the must and it sure didn’t feel that hot. It smelt OK (At that temperature you would expect to start to smell some off odors). I check all my fermentation bins and they all had the same temperature. Heat spikes during fermentation is normal, but this seemed pretty late in the fermentation to be getting so hot. So, I found another thermometer and rechecked the temperature: 78°F. Phew, crisis averted, the wine was fine. Time to taste the wine. Mmm, delicious – lots of fruity aromas and nice round tannins! After cleaning and sanitizing the sides of my fermentation bins, I then had to work out which barrels to press the Furlong Syrah into on Friday. So, into the cellar I went to look at my empty barrels (and then climb up stacks of barrels to mark the ones I want to use). After that it was time to spend a couple of hours with a rag, some solvent and a razor blade. What has this got to do with winemaking you may ask? Well, when I bottled my wine last June, there were about two-dozen bottles that where used to help calibrate the labeling machine when we started bottling. All those labels were crooked, so I had to scrape them off, remove the glue left on the bottles and clean them before hand-applying new labels. Next it was time to move bins around, have some lunch and then back to more punch downs. After all that, who would want to work in a winery? Well, I do. I love what I am doing and I’m doing what I love. Maybe tonight, I’ll even drink a glass of wine!