Next Stop, Australia!
Written By: Michael Corbett on Wed, Jan 23rd 2008
You may have noticed that the title of this column in Jumping Into Vino, and let me assure you it is named that for a reason. The last varietal I highlighted, Shiraz, put the Australian wine industry on the map, and it just so happens that in a few days time I will be stepping foot in Adelaide, South Australia. One week later I will be starting work at a winery in Langhorne Creek, near the Barossa Valley.
For those not familiar with the winemaking industry, every fall wineries look for seasonal interns to help with the harvest. I am doing what many aspiring winemakers do, which is follow the seasons by working back to back harvests in different hemispheres. Fresh off of working at a winery in Napa Valley, I am leaving the cloudy California winter to meet fall weather and harvest time down under in Australia. Working in Australia gives me the chance to double the amount of my experience in a year by getting a second harvest under my belt as well as exposing me to different winemaking techniques and decisions - key experience in this artisan profession.
What may seem like a glamorous job involving nothing but tasting and pontificating wine descriptors, is actually a super stressful job full of manual labor. Imagine this: 90% of the critical decision making that goes into your end product happens during two months of harvesting and fermentation. All it takes is one rainstorm, a fermentation gone wrong, or one piece of broken equipment and you could be in serious trouble. On top this, all the decisions made need to be based not on how the wine will taste today or tomorrow, but after 18 months of aging and bottling.
This sleepless window of time is known as "crush", and serves as the hazing ritual for entering the production side of winemaking. A fine wine takes countless hours of grape picking, stem pitch forking, pumice shoveling, tank scrubbing, and any other type of work that leads to dirtied, calloused, purple hands. When things get into full swing, life becomes a blur of incoming grapes and outgoing stems and pumice, with the sweet (or stinky!) smell of fermentations in the air. It takes true passion to do nothing but smell and taste grapes, grape juice, and fermented grape juice (a far cry from finished wine) at all hours of the day.
With that said, then the benefits for an aspiring winemaker are endless. The ability to taste throughout the process is fascinating. Suddenly the wine descriptors commonly heard (wet, jammy, juicy, spicy, etc) all start to make sense. I'll get to witness winemaking first hand, a process that is a third science, a third art, and a third magic and gut feelings.
But here's the great news: You can read up on my experience throughout the process without lifting a single grape cluster. I'll be posting weekly articles throughout crush time – no matter how bloodshot my eyes, purple my hands, or sore my back. Check in each week as I keep you all posted on this year's Australian wine harvest.
