The Crush

This year was the year that Tom and I decided that we were going to make wine. It came from us talking about our ideal jobs, and where we’d want to be, and we both had the comment that “it would be great to own a winery at some point, that would be the ultimate dream.” So then we sat down with a pen and paper and thought, what would be step 1 for being able to do this. It was decided that starting off as home winemakers would be a good step in the first direction.

So in late August I ordered 200 lbs from Stillwaters Vineyards, a winery in the Paso Robles area that caters to home winemakers. They let you come pick out the grapes when the brix level is at the proper range, which is somewhere between 24-26 (Brix is the measurement used for sugar levels in foods and liquids, fyi.) Luckily for us, the brix got to that point at the only weekend that we both could meet and pick them up. So, Tom took the train down from San Francisco , and I drove up to Paso Robles where we would rendezvous for the grape pickup. We both arrived at about 2, and headed to meet Paul Hoover, owner of the winery.

When we arrived, he showed us our grapes, which were Cabernet Savignon grapes. “There you go guys, all yours.” Whoa whoa whoa…this just wouldn’t do. We both didn’t travel 3 hours to just grab some grapes and run. So we told him “this is our first time making wine, any suggestions for us?”

Well, he instantly changed his tune. We went right to the back, and what he started as a five minute pick up, turned into about a 3 hour tutorial on the full winemaking process. It was awesome.

This is how the winery ferments their wine. Big, fairly open containers that the crushed grapes sit in. It made me feel better looking at this, because I realized that wine in general isn’t really made in a sterile environment. There was a healthy dose of fruit flies around, and we actually saw a praying mantis crawling around the tanks. I guarantee a few fruit flies ended up in the wine.Think about that next time you toast your expensive bottle of wine.

He also showed us the tanks where they do their secondary fermentation. Huge barrels of wine. bubbling with carbonated bubbles that get released through those airlocks on the top. I'm having a tough time grasping the idea that I'm going to be get my wine to even do this.

The grounds were awesome, and after our tutorial we retired to their tasting room, where we sampled a lot of their best wine. We'll see how ours stacks up...

The next morning was when the crush started at our house. We had friends and family over to help us, and we needed it.

After putting the wine through the crusher, we needed to pull the stems off of the grapes. This was a serious job, and it was good that friends were there, because we needed everyone's helping hands, reaching in and pulling out all the stems. What we thought was going to take an hour ended up taking about 4 hours.

We added sulfites, yeast nutrients, and what we thought was the yeast. Two days later the must hadn't heated up at all. Panic time! After a series of furious calls, Tom and realized that we hadn't actually added yeast. Sweet, it's only the most important aspect of wine making. I drove up the the Culver City Brew Co on a rainy, miserable day after work and got the yeast before they closed. It was added, and almost within hours there was a temperature change in the vat of must. So, the grapes now sit in their skins for a week as part of the "primary fermentation."

A lost friend, or just nutrients for my plants?

We lost a good friend the other day. My fish, Oscar, finally keeled over and died after swimming around in my aquarium for almost 5 years. I’m not sure if you can tell in the picture, but this fish was a HOG by the time he kicked the bucket. He ate goldfish (and many of my other aquarium fish) en route to growing to be at least 2 lbs by the time he finally died.

It was a sad experience taking him out of the tank, especially because there was 2 or 3 times where I thought he was dead, and went in to pull him out, only to have him start swimming for a day or two, almost like he was trying to prove that he wasn’t dead yet.

Once he was dead, I decided that the best way to honor ol’ Oscar was to plant him in the ‘garden’ as a way to help nurture the soil, and plants that I plan on growing over the winter. So, I dug a grave, and shoveled him in there. I added a couple of scoops of compost on top of him (filled with earthworms, in order to help with the de-composing…) and then patted dirt over the hole of his grave.

Now, I know this is disgusting. Trust me, I know. But now that I consider myself a full-fledged farmer, I can look at the circle of life as a complete circle, from fish to farm; and I don’t really have any problem eating some nice romaine lettuce, or sugar snap peas that will be growing over the grave of a lost friend.