Working Girl

I guess I am not really a working girl since I am not getting paid to do this job. I am volunteering my time out at the winery because they are getting ready to bottle and they needed some help with the racking.

(After the first fermentation, the wine goes into barrels. During this time the lees (read: dead yeast cells, grape particles) settles to the bottom. In order to get the wine ready for bottling you must rack the wine from the lees (read: separate the wine from the lees).)

After the wine has been punped out of the barrel, the barrel needs to be cleaned. That was my job yesterday. Essentially I spin the barrel until the hole is facing down. The lees starts pouring out of the barrel and I catch it in a bucket. Unfortunately there are generally two buckets-full of lees so I have to bend over and watch the buckets to make sure that they don’t overflow. Then I transfer the buckets of lees to another barrel that we are just filling up with lees. We’ll let this barrel settle and pull out more wine for here later.

After the lees is out, I take what is called a gamma jet, which is really just a swirly sprinkler hooked up to a power washer and super hot water, and I spray out the inside of the barrel. I wouldn’t want to get hit with the spray! Ouch! You can see all of the lees that didn’t come out of the barrel plus tartrates that precipitated out while the wine was sitting in the barrel. I gamma jet until the water runs clear out of the barrel for about a minute.

Then, if no one else is doing it, I pallet-jack the barrels over to the ozone machine and I sterilize the barrels with another jet. I let the barrels drain and then I scrub the opening with a little brush and wait for someone to fork-lift them two high and move them back into the cave.

All I have to say is… Wow-ieeee.

Could I do this all of the time? I am kind of digging it. But right now my back is sore, my hands were in a permanent cramp last night from grabbing the sides of the barrels to rotate them and I am getting a little sunburned. But it feels good to work.