FInally an entry from Mike

Alright it has been a while since I have written in the blog. I think in my last entry I talked about the trip out here and got right up to working at the winery so I'll talk about what I actually do at the winery. The cellar crew gets there at 7am and starts setting up the crush equipment. The crush equipment consists of an incline to take the grapes from the ground to the top of the destemmer. The stems are removed and the berries fall onto a vibrating grid that shakes tiny pieces of stuff out. Then they fall onto a conveyor belt and get sorted by 8 Mexican ladies. They finally fall off the belt through a crusher and into the pump where they are pumped into the tank. At the end of the day the equipment gets taken apart and cleaned. The grapes cold soak in the tank for 5 days then they start fermenting. The skins float to the top and form a cap. This cap has to be punched down into the juice to release the CO2 from underneath it and to get some oxygen in there. We do this by pumping juice from the bottom of the tank over the top with a sprinkler like device. There about 20 tanks to pump over twice a day each with time varying from 5 to 15 minutes each so it is a big job. The hardest part is moving the pump around all the equipment and hoses laying on the ground. In addition to pumpovers I also check every batch with a hydrometer to see how much sugar is left while it is fermenting. At the peak of harvest that took about 6 hours a day. If there was any time left I also made additions of yeast, acid, and water to tanks. The average day was about 12 hours long and some of them were 14 or 16 hours. I even worked 18 hours one day. For about 4 weeks I worked an average of 75 hours a week hence there was not much updating of the blog.
Now things have calmed down. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I am off work from wednesday night until sunday. Sunday night the winery is taking the crew out to dinner so I am looking forward to that. I'm at my Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Jim's house right now. I saw Grandma and Grandpa last night for Thanksgiving dinner which was great. Tonight my cousins are coming for dinner which will be fun. I hope everyone at home had a good Thanksgiving and ate too much.