The Harvesters

"Working in the vineyards: how romantic!" my friends and family exclaimed after learning I would be quitting my job to work at a winery. Yes, I thought so, too.

Recalling thoughts of love for some, nature and serenity for others, wine is certainly a beautiful drink. One would be quite remiss, though, to associate any of its beauty with its production. Allow me to explain, I'm begging you.

September, 8:00am: a typical day of white grape harvest. Nine of us stand together on the crushing deck awaiting a delivery of 150 FYBs (f***-ing yellow bins) -- one FYB, it should be noted, holds about 25 pounds of fruit. 200 of them arrive -- this is hardly a surprise. We must load the fruit (all of it!) into our press, a large, spinning stainless steel cylinder that lies horizontally 10 feet off the ground, and is supported only by a pair of rickety metal legs. Playfully dubbed "the Monster," it is studded throughout its body with tiny holes much like a colander, and houses an internal bladder system ("the Creature"), which gently inflates, thereby squeezing and straining its contents, extracting the juice which will be transferred to a holding tank to be turned into wine. It has a single sliding door on its very top and a maximum capacity of two tons -- this is problematic.

"Karl, Adam," booms the voice of the winemaker, "crawl on top of the press and jam as much fruit in as you can while we dump!" Karl begins muttering the Lord's Prayer under his breath while I sing Christmas carols (best I could do at the time). As we finagle our way up the machine, then, the overwhelming quantity of fruit is consolidated and placed in four large bins, which, in turn, are fastened to the forklift for easy and efficient dumping. It's 10:00 a.m. and we're ready to go.

Karl and I are in position, and, prayers finished, we give the signal to the forklift driver to start dumping. Hundreds of pounds of fruit descend upon us in thunderous waves; and, just as a hailstorm, God's fury, beats down mercilessly upon the earth, so the grapes crash against the steel of the press, until, suddenly, the forklift driver -- who is hard of hearing -- discerns our call:

"FOR-THE-LOVE-OF-GOD STOP!" we have been screaming for several moments as the grapes clump in a massive pile and begin to fall over the sides of the press. Karl and I then reach into the creature's giant maw and start shoving large groups of clusters deep into its sides. Our arms, scratched from rubbing against the abrasive edges of the stems, start to bleed, and the sugar from the grape juice makes us appetizing to the bees; nevertheless we continue shoveling until enough room has been made available and the dumping can proceed.

So the process continues until the press is full. The remaining grapes -- of course there are more grapes -- are put once more in FYBs and passed up to Karl and me so we can cram them in. Cluster by cluster, then, we punch, push, thump, beat, strike, and cajole the grapes in; sometimes standing on them, sometimes jumping on them, we do whatever it takes.

After two hours the press doors are shut. Karl has been stung (he always gets stung), and we are both scraped, bleeding, and covered in sticky grape juice from hoof to snout. It's noon, and the press will be squeezing for two hours while we await our next two deliveries of 150 FYBs. 200 will come. It will be no surprise.

Of course, I must say that the above story depicts only the beginning of the life of a bottle of wine; for once the juice has sat in its holding tank, it must be fermented, placed in barrels, and monitored daily for a period of months before it can be bottled and sold. Nevertheless, I think I have provided an accurate "day in the life," as it were, of a grape on its course to becoming wine -- and the shenanigans may be trusted to endure the entire journey.

To what, then, can the inimitable beauty of wine be attributed? I guess I'm not sure. But, funny, as I look over what I've written, I can only smile as I remember that the next harvest is in South Africa, and only one month away. I wonder if I'll find the answer there. Perhaps I ought to go look...