Friday I headed out on a trip to O'Neel Vineyard in Santa Rosa to pull some samples. The fruit looked good but will probably be another week before it's ready for picking.
In preparation for Saturday we had to clean barrels for the Chardonnay we were going to process.
Lining up the barrels on the barrel washer
When we arrived at work on Saturday we had just over 9 tons of Chardonnay to process (which was 20 bins of fruit.) The grapes were dropped into the hopper of the sorting table and we picked out any leaves and undesirable fruit.
Sorting the fruit
Once the fruit is sorted it is taken to the press where it goes through a 2-hour process of being squeezed dry. All the juice is then pumped to a holding tank and then transferred to the barrels we prepped on Friday where it will ferment and turn into the Chardonnay we all know and love.
Grapes getting dumped into the press.
Grapes in the press ready for squeezing.
So as we were processing our TWENTY bins of chardonnay we looked up to see another delivery...an additional 18 bins, right around 8 tons, of Chardonnay that needs to be processed as well. The good thing was, we already had to sorting table and press running so we just needed to keep the process flowing with this additional delivery.
Needless to say it was a long day. I arrived at 6:30am and headed home close to 7:30pm. (I was fortunate to leave earlier than some of the others that arrived later that morning...I was beat!)
Here's a shot of the 3 interns, Arnold, Emily and me, exhausted at the end of our long day.
I am heading back to work at 10am this morning and have a day off tomorrow. (What to do??)
I am not sure what is in store for me today but with a "midnight punch" in store, it is bound to be another long day!
1 comment:
Looks like you had a long day!! I hope you're enjoying the day off today :)
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