THE 2001 GRAPE HARVEST REPORT
by TOMMY VACCA
Rainy Tuesday. Acid injuries. Nickelwell… the well to the center of the earth, that spits up nickels. Interstellar monetary value? Who determined this? Alan Greenspan's eternal space baby, in his gossamer sack.
I need a story!
What are these people doing? Swapping acid injury stories. Getting marooned.
GETTING MAROONED: An Acid Injury
Cold sunshine. False warmth. New perspective of room afforded from atop the bathroom partition. Treacherous climb. Magnificent view. Descent impossible. I slide and jump! Ten-inch scrape on belly.
SNOWBALL
Play in snow. Legs achey.
The End
Hmmm... short and sweet, but not elucidating. Classical in style (i.e. having a beginning, a middle and – pay attention now – an end; viz., above: "The End") That's what's great about movies and books and such. Even if you don't like them, there's no debating their beginningness, middleness and, yep, endness. In that order no less!
I'm sure good Doctor E____ Lazyape could raise some frighteningly salient points to prove otherwise but this ain't no teleconference, it's narrative. Therefore, with the possibility of failure precluded (oh, but I will flail) I lurch towards the inevitable end.
That prudent and gainful concession/assertion having been made, perhaps we can move forward. I think I'm ready now.
Wait..... yeah.
Ready.
* * *
THE 2001 GRAPE HARVEST REPORT
by Tommy Vacca
Please note that what follows IS NOT to be construed as the Gospel Truth but merely as the half-baked observations followed by the fully-baked recountings. God bless.
The grapes started falling on August 21st, one day before my birthday. I was slated to turn 27. I did, but that's another story. That Tuesday started like many other summer days in Northern California–a foggy morning giving over to dazzling sunshine in the early part of the afternoon. It's fucking choice! I give the date the crush (as we call it) began, but actually some of the méthode champeniose suckers had already begun harvesting some of the early chardonnay ten days prior, but that's what they get for making sparkling wines: hard troubles and a bubbly product. The beginning of harvest is marvelous for a number of reasons, not least of which being that for the next few months you'll actually make some money.
Another reason I love the start of the crush is the same reason dominoes are still compelling. There's something mesmerizing about the phenomenon of the chain reaction. Growers and winemakers will fastidiously test the sugar (brix) and acid levels (pH) of their proposed grapes trying like mad to attain that perfect balance of sweet fruit and tart acidity. They're cool and collected, but eventually somebody blinks and everybody freaks and starts harvesting. It's kind of hilarious, but you can only savor it as long as it takes for the first trucker to show up at your facility clamoring to be offloaded lickety-split so he can go home and find his false teeth which he feels may be among the empty cartons of Marlboros strewn about.
"Beepbeep" said the truck.
"Hold on a minute, I've still got one more thought — real quick," I said.
¿How are the grapes going to be this year? As you undoubtedly know, we had a chilly spring which turned into another scorching summer but this time with a worrisome 5 week period with little morning fog.
¿Would the flavor be shot? I wasn't one to say, I can barely put one wine word after the next, let alone wax viticultural. My intuition grudgingly pointed to an ordinary harvest. My puerile optimism was certain of another banner year. Hope, ignorance and denial all spring eternal.
Upon reflection though, it seems that both sides of my thinking were partially correct — while it doesn't stand to be an eye-popping year, there is some good shit out there. Yes, we call it shit while we work on it, but I've never, never seen anybody spit in the shit/product. Even if someone did, the wine passes through a honeycomb filter that's a mere 4.5 microns at the apogee. Tres sanitary. We love you. Keep buying the 'wicked' hard grape cider. Thank you. Alcohol inhibits pathogens anyway, so fret not.
"Beepbeep" said Darryl's truck.
One last deep breath, and in the immortal words of Jane's Addiction: HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOO!
There is method to this madness. It isn't always readily apparent, but it's there. This is an industry and not some fly-by-night operation. It's been done before, and it'll happen again. Rest assured IT'S NOT A TOTAL SCAM.
In some cases you will get what you pay for, in many other instances you'll be paying a premium for the idea of fine wine. This is legitimate and an irreducible truism of the biz. That is – the perceived benefit of certain brands. Think about cereals. I'm a Froot Loops fan and while the generic alternative 'Jungle Fruties', or whatever it is (I don't know, I don't buy it) may be essentially the same thing, for some reason it just isn't as good. My goodness, we are groomed consumers. I guess that's the royal we. You, gentle reader, are far too erudite for such shenanigans....
Oh yeah – the method.
STEP I: Receive the Grapes
Medicated (or should be) Joe Blow pulls up in his rig. There are grapes on board. They are organized into bins. Your mission, which you have no choice but to accept, is transform this purple or green mass into hooch. It's pretty straightforward at this point. If you're dealing with white wine grapes (which are of course green in color), you'll place them directly into your press.
Reds on the other had, will initially pass through the stemmer/crusher before being propelled to their tanks. The stemmer is like a perforated 55 gallon drum on its side with a double helix set of paddles inside. As the clusters pass through this smart little number, the grapes get knocked off the stem and are dropped through the bottom into a holding container called a sump and are then propelled to the tanks sans stems by way of a hefty pump. The stems are thrown out the other side and are collected to be used as compost for tilling the next season.
Once you've got yer white grapes in the press, the interrogation begins. Still won't talk, eh? Let's just jack you up to 2.4 bars (1 bar being the atmospheric pressure here on Earth). After about an hour and a half of varying degrees of pressure the last of the useable juice has been extracted from the white grapes. Dump those skins, they wont do you any good any more. Save 'em for the roto-thriller. But pray tell, what exactly goes on in these press cycles?
Suppose you've got ten tons of green chardonnay grapes. A fair amount, to be sure. Once you dump all that stuff into one place, the sheer weight of the grapes will produce a crushing effect of it's own (carbolic maceration, for Christ's sake) and will cause some hooch to go a'cascading. Fortunately the viticulturists thought of this very contingency and installed yet another sump underneath the press where the free-run juice might escape. This sump is like an anti-toilet. Whereas a toilet will stop filling when a certain level has been reached (the lever arm floats up 'til its cutoff point) the bottom sump will start to activate another pump to send the juice to a holding tank (without yeast it's still juice). Once the free-run juice has been put to bed, so to speak, the press begins in earnest. Working like a stairmaster set on gradual climb the press will slowly inflate and relax its internal bladder squeezing out the remaining juice hidden within the grapes until you're left with skins more suitable for making papyrus.
Reds, on the other hand, will not be pressed immediately, but will typically be run through the stemmer/crusher and then conveyed to the holding tanks so that the juice and the skins can be kept in conjugal proximity to impart both color and tannins in orgiastic conditions.
I should point out that I'm streamlining the operation here, it isn't as if all of our grapes come in on one mammoth day, but rather they come in like an angry storm. Sweet little drops at first – plink, plink – here's four tons of pinot noir – plop — here's a smattering of viognier. These days typically last 9-10 hours and you've still got time and energy to hit the bars and swim at the river. Yippee. Within ten days to two weeks however the outlook has changed considerably. Suddenly you're looking at 20 tons of zinfandel behind 16 tons of merlot behind 35 tons of chardonnay. The days stretch a bit.
"Those numbers mean nothing without context!" you shout.
To be continued...
Date: December 1, 2001
Danny Bonaduce Has Broken All Ten Commandments
by CHRISTOPHER HICKMAN
Male Snit
by SOME OTHERWISE NORMAL PEOPLE
To Be Noble, Part II
by ELEANOR ROOS
WHERE CAN I PARK MY CAR IN BROOKLYN?
