Bad grape crushing technique

Hardly a tour of the winery goes by without someone referencing the classic "I Love Lucy" episode where she and an Italian woman have a spat in the vat. You can see part of that video at TV Land here: Just scroll down to the last Lucy clip.

It's true that the human foot is a great grape crusher; it's hard enough to juice the grapes, but soft enough to not break any bitter-flavored seeds. Fortunately, we have modern-day equipment that does a faster and more complete job than this traditional method (besides, the FDA severely frowns on toe-jam in wine).

Even though the old ways are gone in the states, it's not uncommon to see grape-stomping at harvest festivals. However, the juice from the grapes can't be used for commercial wine but can make for a good time...

...unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong. Watch this "live" video if you dare.

18 Degrees Brix

The zin is roaring along. Almost too hot. We are punching down 3-times a day to keep the juice cooler and to extract as much color and flavor as possible from the fruit. The grapes started at 25° Brix and now were down to 18 in just 24 hours.

What are Brix? No, we are not talking about those things they used as a model to style Volvo automobiles. It's a system used to measure the sugar content of grapes and wine. On labels, wineries sometimes list the Brix at the time of harvest to express the degree of ripeness of the grapes (normally in the range of 20° to 25°). After fermentation, Brix can indicate how sweet a wine is as a measurement of residual sugar (2 degrees Brix would be slightly sweet; 10 degrees Brix residual sugar would be very sweet). Essentially, 1° Brix = 1% sugar.

We want all of our red wines to be under 0.5° Brix. That is generally considered to be the threshold of "dry." Most people cannot detect sugar on their tongue below this point.

More trivia: the concept of Brix was introduced by a 19th century German chemist, A.F.W. Brix. Somebody must have thought it sweet to name the scale after him (stop groaning).

New Volvos are a little sweeter now too.

I'll explain "Punch Downs" later. Hint it has nothing to do with boxing and is only occasionally violent.

Vineyard vermin

I love taking pictures and it's no surprise vineyard landscapes are some of my favorite subjects. Four years ago, I took a couple of steps onto some private land to get a great angle on a beautiful row of cabernet sauvignon with a red barn in the distance.

Then, BOOM! An unmistakable blast of shotgun fire nearby. Whoa, these folks take trespassers seriously. I dove back into my car and began packing up my gear. Two minutes passed then BOOM! Another round. I drove down the road a bit to look for another angle on the barn and heard the explosion again.

It soon dawned on me, it was some kind of blast cannon on a timer to scare away birds and rodents (and, amateur photographers, apparently). So much for the romance of peaceful vineyard living!

Indeed, there is something artificial-looking about vineyard this time of year. Most of the vineyards are draped in plastic green netting to prevent birds and ground squirrels from gorging themselves on the vineyard owners profits. Mike Prowes, from Creston Hills Vineyard, estimates he's lost over a couple of thousand dollars-worth of grapes this year to squirrels alone.
He tried a number of remedies from firearms to poisons, only to worry more about terrifying or harming the prize Australian shepherds he and Sharon own.

His latest eradication effort is with traps. He's caught over 200 already. They're certainly not as handsome as his scarecrow, but definitely more effective.

Roll out the barrels

Do you have a storage unit? We do and yeah, it's got all kinds of stuff we don't need. In fact, it's impossible to get to the old bankers boxes (with seven years of phone bills in them) or to my old high-school year book (you should see my hair), until harvest. Yup, we dug out 21 barrels out from around dad's golf clubs and grandma's old couch. Don't ask me how we even got them in there but here they are loaded into my truck and onto a borrowed trailer (thanks, Chuck!).

After lugging around and moving all these heavy and awkward casks I didn't feel too guilty about the dusty stair-climber machine we uncovered in the back of the tin room.