The week passes quickly. I am now in a groove and need minimal supervision. Good thing, as Luciano and Barbara are leaving Tuesday for the Wine Experience in New York. Luciano is nervous and doesn’t want to leave as grapes are still coming in and vats are full of fermenting juice. I hear a lot of “porca miseria!” and “crispa!” on Monday and Tuesday. He is stressed, and so is Barbara. This is a busy time at the winery. And Luciano is the show here – there are no consulting oenologists or winemakers coming in to make the wine. This is a small winery, and the winemaker has his name on the label. They don’t want to go, but feel they must. (Footnote 1: I check with some friends in NYC who tell me that the Speculum gets quite mad at winemakers who don’t come when invited. If you don’t accept, don’t ever be expect to be invited back.) (Footnote 2: Why this event is scheduled during harvest time is beyond my comprehension. I mean, the Wine Spectator, organizer of this event, is ostensibly a “wine” magazine, right? So they should know that “wine” is produced from “grapes”? And that “grapes” are a “fruit” that is harvested when “ripe,” a condition that is contingent on factors such as sunshine, rainfall, soils and geography, among others? And that this “harvest season” can extend from August to December, depending on the place? So why in fuck’s name are they scheduling the event in the middle of October? Are they morons? Idiots? Stupid? Do they like making people’s lives difficult? Or maybe … just maybe … they are completely oblivious.)
(Shit. I know I’m going to get mail about this.)
Tuesday morning, they are both running around trying to finish last-minute items. 20 minutes before departure, Luciano goes home (literally 2 minutes toward town), changes his shirt and pants, and is back to check on things one last time. They leave for Milan around 10. Luca and the crew are picking in the vineyards. Andrea and I are left in charge of the cellars … truly, the inmates have been left with the keys to the asylum (cue maniacal laugh here).
For the next three days, Luciano is calling every 20 minutes on the special “Luciano phone” that Andrea carries with him always. Analysis results, tasting notes, visual indicators and anything else are conveyed back to Luciano, and he tells us when to pump-over, when to delestage and when to svinare. Grapes are coming in thick and fast and Andrea is stressed and a tad cranky at times. I just try to do as much as I can, as quickly as possible.
The phone is ringing constantly, and it cracks me up to no end that the special ringtone that is programmed in for Luciano’s calls is the intro to the song “I just died in your arms tonight.” I find this incredibly hilarious and smile to myself everytime Andrea snaps the phone open and yells “Dimmi!” (tell me!).
Time passes quickly and 12 hour days pass in the blink of an eye. Every day is cleaning, racking, crushing and pressing. We shovel pomace, we heave crates and load pallets, we pull hoses and work like crazy. It is deeply rewarding to go home each night, shower off the grape guts and fall asleep in 15 minutes. It’s the kind of tired that feels right.
Plus, It's the full moon ... I sleep really well. Some pics of the winery and Monforte with the moon. The winery is really beautiful and tastefully lit at night, IMHO. The moon is so bright you could almost read by its light.
Wednesday, I do deliveries with Mariuccia. She takes me by the castle at Grinzane Cavour, which I had never seen. There's a wine museum, which we pass, and wine shop, where we discuss the relative merits of label design. The Sandrone bottles are really different from most others, which feature lots of script and curlicue script at that.
Thursday night rolls around and we are in good shape. The weather is holding (no rain, though it was forecast for Wednesday and Thursday), the grapes are beautiful, the fermentations are coming along nicely and Luciano is happy, from afar, with the progress we have made. Only one rough spot – one of the Barbera tanks started fermentation insanely quickly after about 28 hours of maceration – and promptly bubbled over the top of the tank (Damn! The one day I didn’t bring my camera!). We drain off some liquid and start recirculation with cold water cooling in the tank jacket to get the temperature down and the fermentation under control (the stainless steel fermentation tanks are double-walled and one can pump hot or cold water through the "jacket" to control temperature). Remember, when the must comes in Luciano heats it up to about 30-33 degrees C – he finds that the warm maceration before fermentation does wonders for color and aroma extraction. Once fermentation starts, the temperature is brought down to 22-24 C. At 30 C, the tanks would explode from fermenting so quickly! The colors and aromas on the new wines are amazing.
I stay ‘til 8 on Thursday, feeling guilty that I am taking the next three days off – I’ve been planning to meet friends from COS in Verona since April, and the time is upon us. I am really ready for a break from the chaos and clamor of harvest. I drive up the hill after work to the Altares to say hi, and their almost-last grapes are still coming in … so I help them crush the final load, clean the equipment, then join them for dinner in the house. Silvia and Elio are on a tear, and the winery workers are heaving buckets of grapes into Elio’s crusher/destemmer (his own design!) faster than I can feed the buckets into the washer. Tes is hosing off the equipment as soon as we are done with it. This crushing line is about three times as fast as at Sandrone, and it is pretty damn exciting to see a whole trailer load of grapes go down in 20 minutes instead of the hour plus I had been expecting. This is, like, winemaking on amphetamines, dude.
We have the crush pad cleaned and the must in tank in no time at all.
Lucia has prepared another amazing meal and though everyone is beat, we laugh, eat, gossip and drink, finishing up the rest of the day’s sample bottles that were opened for tourists. (The 2004 Altare Barolo is stupendous. Run, don’t walk, to your local retailer and beat him into submission to get as many bottles as you can lay your hands on.) After and hour or so, everyone starts nodding off. I am in bed at 11 and for once, I don’t need to set an alarm!
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