Facebook can sometimes be a great friend in and of itself. Friday afternoon I *just happened* to be browsing through the numerous and varied subjects posted as status updates when I happened apon this jewel:
Anybody want to come help pick Zinfandel tmrw am @ Landa Vineyards? Will be food, fun, wine and bocce after! Let me know, they need help!
Seriously?
Really?
How cool is that?!! It was posted by an old friend of mine who I hadn't spoken with for over ten years. So I typed in a quick query about the event and was soon answered back with all the pertinent info.
This is the kind of stuff I love to do. Random. Pretty much unplanned. Great chance to learn something new and see something interesting. Not to mention a great opportunity to lend a hand to a small, family-owned and operated business. I knew I was going to go even though it meant that my once-weekly ritual of sleeping in on Saturday morning would be nixed. Oh well. I sent txt messages to a couple of people inviting them to come along but only one person could come: my adorably preggo little sister. Fun!
We were up well before the sun this morning. I frequently say (and think) that I really can live without seeing the sunrise. I'm not a morning person. Ughh. Alarm clocks are sources of real pain and frequent torture. Kels lives about fourty minutes away from me (in the opposite direction from the vineyard), so she took BART to where I am, I picked her up and after a quick stop at a coffee shop for some hot cocoa (and a bathroom - I could blame the pregnancy hormones, but just as much of it is that small bladders run in our family) we were off!
Have you ever experienced Bay Area traffic? It's gotten progressively worse since I started driving at the age of 16. Back then (in the olden days, when we walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways) outside of rush hour the freeways were reasonably clear. Not so any longer. Now there is bad traffic during any time of the day or night. Especially traveling along the 580 to 101 corridor. Today we discovered the secret to traveling quickly along said route: Leave early in the morning. Aparently Bay Area-ans are not morning people in general. We were on the road by 7am on a Saturday morning and made fantastic time! We rolled up to the vineyard in Sonoma County by 8:15.
My long-lost friend Sarah greeted us, introduced us to the vintner (a fabulously laid-back man named Jim who wore a soft Aussie-style hat) and then (after another bathroom break) we hopped into a few rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and started snipping away with our clippers at the vines.
Kels and I picked a few rows of Cab with Sarah and one other fun couple and had a great time chatting and catching up. I had a chance to learn a smidge about a couple of different varieties of grapes. For instance, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes tend to grow in more sporadic clusters while Zinfandel grapes are darker in color and grow in tight bunches. The tight bunches of the Zinfandel grapes posed a problem for the Landa vineyard this year because just as the grapes were going to be perfect for harvesting we had a random, massive, two-day rainstorm blow through. The rain affects the sugar levels in the grapes (the brix) adversly. The sugar content goes down, so the grapes had to stay on the vine another couple of weeks for the brix to rise to the proper level again.
Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is because the fruit can (and did) get moldy if it sits damp. Sadly, a good portion of the fruit we picked was fairly moldy! We picked around it, snipped moldy sections of fruit out and still managed to get a decent harvest. But just imagine what it could have been like! This experience really made me grateful for farmers. (That combined with my attempt at growing tomatoes, bell peppers and Lima beans this past year). Imagine putting your heart and soul into efforts to grow and tend crops only to have something like a freak rainstorm take out all of your hard work just as you're about to see it pay off! Heartbreaking!
Thankfully, Landa vineyard is more of a hobby for the family. They have careers outside of wine, so they're not counting on this as a cash crop. But there are seriously thousands of vineyards of varying sizes through the Napa/Sonoma/Solano area. They all were hit by the rain. And what about other crops?
...We finished up the harvesting around noon and headed up the hill to the house, where the grapes were put through a machine to remove them from the vines and the juice and squished grapes were collected into giant tubs. The concoction will sit for ten days and cure, at which point the juice will be strained through a sieve and then bottled. Voila! Wine!
A fabulous pasta lunch followed sitting around on a gorgeous back deck with an amazing view for a good while nourished the body and soul. Excellent morning!
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Oh, by the way, I don't drink. I don't advocate drinking or alcohol in any way. But I did thoroughly enjoy this day and had a great time learning about a famous regional industry.
What did you do this weekend??
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Favorite non-PC quote of the day (overheard while harvesting): "I'd make a good Mexican. I'm picking. And I love tacos... and tequila."
Wow.
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