The past two days working at Bin to Bottle have been very exciting. During my winemaking coursework at Cornell thus far I have only produced a wine up to the end of malolactic fermentation. There is still so much of the process, like fining, filtering, bottling, and more that I have learned a lot about but have yet to experience firsthand. Bin to Bottle has given me the opportunity to partake in some of these processed for the first time, and on Tuesday I was lucky enough to help in filtering a wine!

Day 7

Most of my day was spent looking for samples in the barrel warehouse. This is a busy time of year for volatile acidity (VA) analyses, as bottling is coming up and many winemakers want to ensure their product has low levels of VA before beginning to think about bottling. I explained the enormousness of the barrel warehouse in my last post, but let me illustrate it once again… it’s HUGE. Suffice to say, it took me almost an entire workday to procure one tray of samples from the barrel warehouse. Chelsea spent her day actually testing the samples in the lab for VA. Toward the end of the day, though, I went to help a worker set up a pad filter!

As it turns out, setting up a pad filter is a tricky task. As per it’s name, a pad filter is a filtration system that consists of multiple paper pads having different pore sizes. In this case, I was setting up a cross-over pad filter with 3 and 0.5 micron filter pads. This means that wine would travel first through a filter of 3 microns, and then through a filter of 0.5 microns, so the finished product would not have any particles larger than 0.5 microns in it. The first task was to place all the pads in the filter and compress them to ensure there will be no leaks once wine started to travel through it. Even this required a lot of attention; the pads needed to be placed into the machine in specific orientations and had to be exactly centered in the filter to no leaks could occur.

Next we needed to prepare the pads for filtration. It is important that the pads are completely soaked with water before they can be used to filter wine for best results. First the pads are wet by running cold water through the filter. Next warm water is run through to get rid of any paper/cardboard taste the pads may have (we wouldn’t want a clients wine to end up tasting like cardboard!). Then cold water is run through the filter once more to cool the pads back down. Next a citric acid solution is run through to ensure the sterility of the filter. Cold water is run through again to get rid of any citric acid taste. A supply of nitrogen gas is then run through to get rid of the water (so the wine won’t be diluted) and keep oxygen exposure low. Finally the filter is ready for wine!

Day 8

After a large amount of preparation then filter was finally ready for wine! Before we could start filtration, though, we needed to clean out a tank for the filtered wine and set up hoses to transport the wine from it’s original tank to the filter and from the filter to the new tank. After we did that we ran the wine through the filter and into the newly cleaned tank. We had a few mishaps with leaking that set us back, but ultimately we were able to filter the wine with minimal losses. In order to do this, though, we worked on it all day! It turned out to be a big job, but I am so glad I had the opportunity to see a filtration and to help set it up and carry it through.

Stay tuned for more Bin to Bottle stories… Cheers!

The Chelsea and Stacey Show

We had another eventful day of work at Bin to Bottle! We started the day doing more sampling out of the many barrels. We then spent some tine in the lab running the monthly volatile acidity wine samples. In the afternoon we did some sulfur dioxide additions to a couple barrels, followed with some tank sanitizing. Later we did a bunch of racking from barrels into tanks, to prepare seven different (very specific) blends for the upcoming bottling. We used a racking system called “The Bulldog”, which was very neat.

This is the bulldog system in action. The white hose is the nitrogen gas, and the upper hose is where the wine goes, to be connected to a hose that is going into a tank.

The Bulldog racking wand uses nitrogen gas to transfer wine from barrels to tanks easily. The wine is very easily controlled, without adding any oxygen or agitating the wine. The Bulldog system allowed for really easy, quick, and clean rackings. The end of the wand has a pin on the bottom, so that when you put it into the barrel, it does not suck up any of the lees. The top of the wand has a clear glass tube, that you can watch the wine travel through while you are racking. The guys usually hold a flashlight up to the glass tube, and you can see when the wine starts to become a little cloudy, they stop racking, and that barrel is finished.

This is the “gun” part of the bulldog. This part gets inserted into the barrel. 

The previous day, we went through the work orders and clearly marked out what barrels would be mixed in to each of the seven different blends. We used color coded specific tape to mark each barrel, coordinating the blend it would belong to. This made it very easy to make the different blends, and allowed us to double check that we were racking the correct barrels. After each blend was racked into a tank, the blend was agitated with nitrogen gas, and I took a 50mL sample of the blend to the lab, to check the amount of free sulfur dioxide. But before I could take the sample to the lab, I had to open the upper door of the tank, drop a tape measure down the side of the tank and measure how many empty inches there were in the tank, before I hit the wine. Then I would take that number and look at the handy-dandy chart attached to the tank to figure out how many gallons of wine I had. I could then take the sample to the lab, and record how many gallons of wine we had total for that specific sample. The winemaker had a specific amount of free sulfur dioxide they wanted in the wine, so if the lab found the free sulfur dioxide to be to low, they would provide us with the exact amount of sulfur to add, based on the total gallons of wine we measured. We would then add the addition of sulfur, agitate the tank with nitrogen gas, and take another 50mL sample of wine to the lab for verification. Everything at Bin to Bottle, is about checking, double checking, triple checking, and sometimes even more checking, which is a good thing when it comes to wine

Well that is all for today, Cheers!

Stay tuned!

~The Chelsea and Stacey Show

Day 5 of our Bin to Bottle experience!

We hit Napa Valley with John Wilkinson to tour a few local wineries.

First we visited Reynolds Family Winery. The winery had a very Tuscan style to it, so of course it was beautiful. We were led through an extensive tasting, all the wines being outstanding and very interesting.  However, the 2008 Stags Leap Cabernet stood out the most to me. Not only was the wine delicious, but the label on the bottle was incredible. Pictured below, the center bottle.

The mustard flower has become the signature symbol of the Reynolds Family Winery, and this specific bottle has a hand pressed mustard flower on the bottle, as the label. Reynolds has an artist hand press all the labels, and then the labels are applied manually. The labels are very labor intensive, but the finished bottle is gorgeous. The picture above does not do the label justice, the label is so three-dimensional it makes you want to touch it to see if it is real.

After our tasting we did a quick barrel room tour, saw the production area, and tried some barrel samples.

Driving through Napa was overwhelmingly beautiful. There were picture perfect vineyards as far as the eye could see, with the sides of the road littered with extravagant winery estates. It was supposed to be a rainy day, but it turned out to be clear, sunny, making it a perfect day for wine tasting.

Just a short drive down the road, we were headed off to WhiteHall Lane Winery.

We were greeted with more scrumptious Cabernet, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Merlot. I recall the Merlot standing out the most to me, being a blend with primarily Merlot, with some Cabernet and Syrah to make a perfect blend. We went through a tour of the production facility, barrel room, and went to the club members lounge to continue our tour (fancy!).

We then headed down the road to Trinchero and Sutter Home Winery.

Sutter Home is one of the largest family-run independent wineries in the United States. Sutter Home is known for the creation of White Zinfandel. Sutter Home is owned by Trinchero Family Estates, that also sells wine under twenty other labels.

First we toured the colossal wine production site. The scale of this winery was stunning, with tanks so big that you could comfortably live inside them. (Well maybe not comfortably, but you could fit about 5 freshmen dorm rooms inside these tanks).

We then headed back to the Trinchero Estate for a tasting of a few of their labels, including; Folie a Deux, and Seaglass.

We learned about the fortunate accident that happened in 1975, making the first batch of White Zinfandel wine, where some 1,000 gallons of bleed-off juice from red Zinfandel refused to ferment to dryness, retaining a substantial amount of sugar. The wine was set aside for the time being. Then when the winemaker Bob Trinchero returned to the wine, “Two weeks later, I tasted that wine and it was sweet, had a pink color, and I thought, ‘Darn, that’s pretty good. We bottled it, and the rest is history.”

In 1994 Wine Spectator gave Trinchero its Distinguished Service Award for “having introduced more Americans to wine on the table than anyone in history.” What a great story they have.

After an eventful day of wine tasting we headed to “Gott’s Roadside”, a local favorite spot described as a “A 21st‑century version of a 1950s burger joint”, for burgers, onion rings, and milkshakes. The burgers were enormous and delicious, the perfect end to a perfect day!

Well that is all for now, stay tuned!

Cheers!

~The Chelsea and Stacey Show

As Chelsea explained in her post “Bin to Bottle Winery, Napa Valley California,” she and I have been lucky enough to partake in an internship at Bin to Bottle, a custom crush facility in Napa Valley. Our time at the winery so far has been packed with activities, and we are so excited to see what lies ahead!

Day 3

Many days at Bin to Bottle start with collecting samples in the barrel warehouse. Because Bin to Bottle is a custom crush facility, there are many winemakers who use the space and need analyses to be performed so they can monitor their wines and make decisions about what to do next. When a winemaker wants to perform a particular test on a wine, a work order is created which lab workers will complete, and the results are relayed to the winemaker. But before any lab work can be done the samples must be collected! Because there are so many winemakers who are clients of Bin to Bottle, and because Bin to Bottle stores so many barrels, sometimes finding samples can be the hardest part of lab work!

Next Chelsea and I added lactic acid bacteria to several barrels to induce malolactic fermentation. Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is a process where harsh, green apple-tasting malic acid is converted to softer, buttery-tasting lactic acid. It is very common for red wines to undergo MLF and it is said that MLF creates a softer, more rounded mouthfeel. To do these additions Chelsea and I both got to use the rolling ladders in the barrel room to reach the higher barrels! Chelsea and I are both slightly afraid of heights, but luckily the ladders were very stable and we got used to using them quickly.

Napa has a very long growing season due to the unique movement of air and heat in the valley that keeps it cooler during the day and warmer at night. Because the grapes can stay on the vine late into the season, Napa sees much higher Brix levels than one would find in the Finger Lakes Region. High sugar means high alcohol post-fermentation, though, and if alcohol levels get too high it can kill the yeast in a wine before the fermentation is complete. Some of the wines at Bin to Bottle are experiencing stuck fermentations due to this, so Chelsea and I also did some yeast hull additions. I was particularly interested in the additions because I had never done them before. Yeast hulls cause all of the nutrients that yeast (or any living organism in the wine, for that matter) could use to grow to settle out of the wine so that it can be racked and a fermentation can be re-started from scratch. The wines had already been de-alcoholized, so Chelsea and I aided in reaching a clean starting point for re-innoculation. We also got to use a barrel mixer, which was a new experience!

Day 4

Day 4 also started with barrel sampling. Once we had collected all of our samples, we moved to the lab where we did testing for volatile acidity (VA). I had never done this test in a class before, so I was excited to learn how. The protocol is similar to that of finding SO2 values; each wine was distilled, and the distillate was collected and titrated to find a g/100mL value of VA. The distillation is completed using a cash still.

Day four also consisted of topping and potassium bitartrate additions. Topping, or filling each barrel to it’s maximum capacity, ensures that there is no oxygen available in the barrel that a microorganism could use to proliferate and ruin a wine. Potassium bitartrate is added to wines to ensure cold stability. Sometimes if a wine that has not been cold stabilized is exposed to cold temperatures a tartrate precipitate can form at the bottom of the bottle. While the tartrate crystals are completely harmless, people see them as a fault and consumers sometimes even mistake them for shards of glass in the bottle. Potassium bitartrate binds to tartrates and a precipitate is formed. This is called cold stabilization and ensures no tartrates will come out of solution post-bottling.

After work Chelsea and I headed out to the city and after a few mishaps found ourselves in San Francisco! Although it was raining we were still glad to experience the city and some of what is has to offer. We ate a delicious dinner at Barbacco’s and explored the city a bit before heading back to Napa.

Tomorrow we are headed out with John Wilkinson to tour a few local wineries, so stay tuned for Chelsea’s post about that experience!

Cheers!

The Chelsea and Stacey Show 

Hello!

I am lucky enough to be taking part in a 2.5 week-long internship with Stacey Moskwa with Bin to Bottle Winery, a high end custom crush facility, oriented around customer service, located in Napa Valley, California this January!

Our generous host John Wilkinson is the developer and managing partner of Bin to Bottle Winery, and also an alumnus of Cornell University’s Hotel School.

Bin to Bottle Winery has over 120 open and closed top fermenters ranging from 1,800 to 9,000 gallons, with a 25,000 sq. ft. solar powered,humidity and temperature controlled barrel storage building. Bin to Bottle Winery also has many tasks and jobs for the new interns to do! 

Day 1 and 2!

After getting oriented, it was time to empty and clean out the 3,000 gallon tank of Cabernet Sauvignon that had been going through extended maceration since October 2012… but don’t worry there were two tanks left, one for each of the new interns! This was certainly a fun experience!

After getting harnessed up, attaching the oxygen meter, after 40 or so minutes of shoveling and raking the tank was pretty much empty, and the grapes/skins were off to be pressed!

And then it was Stacey’s turn to do the same all over again on the last tank left on skins.

The rest of the first day was spent doing potassium bitartrate additions to a couple tanks of wine, as well as some other fun jobs.

Day 2 was spent doing some bentonite additions to 6 different barrels of a Rose, and doing a couple work orders taking samples from various barrels. Bin to Bottle Winery has so much wine it is incredible anyone can keep track of it all. Not only are there full barrels and tanks covering every inch of the winery, they all belong to different clients, under different wine makers. Bin to Bottle is an amazing facility!

After work Stacey and I headed into downtown Napa Valley and checked out The Oxbow Market, recommended by a bunch of our coworkers.

The Oxbow Market was fantastic, and the only real way to explain, it was like the Ithaca Farmers Market on steroids, with more food vendors, and wine as far as the eye could see! (Heaven)?! We had skirt steaks tacos loaded with goat cheese and of course avocados!

Well that is all for now, we need to go to bed because we are not used to getting up at 8am (California time!)  ;)

But there will be more to come!

Stay tuned: - The Chelsea and Stacey Show 

The next week I did more field checks and pressure bombs, but this time veraison started to occur.  So my boss, Eva, added this to my field check list.  Veraison (ver-a-zen…now say it fast) is defined as the onset of ripening and is the transition from berry growth to berry ripening.  In the red grapes it was a lot easier to see because the grapes were changing colors.  However, in the white grapes you just have to walk up and down the rows feeling the clusters for how soft the berries were and how many were becoming soft on a single cluster.  Another day that week, we were sent out to do some cluster thinning in order to help the grapes grow to the best quality possible.  For that particular merlot block we were in, we were told that if the shoots were short, meaning not taller than the first wire, then they shouldn’t have any clusters on them.  If the shoot was as tall as the second wire, they were allowed to have at least one cluster.  If the shoots were taller than the second wire, then they could have two clusters.  It was definitely fun to experience different tasks in the field but if I was assigned an entire block to thin, it would be done after harvest happened!  You definitely learn to appreciate all the crews that come out to do these things at the speed they do.

Later that week, Rebecca and I got to go out to more ranches around Napa area up in the hills.  Again, seeing the different landscapes that the grapes were growing on was really interesting.  At that ranch, R.H. Phillips, it was very mountainous and the soils were more clay like.  We drove around to all the different blocks and had the opportunity to taste some of the berries.  The red varieties were already almost all the way through veraison just because of the difference in climate at this particular ranch.  To end the week we got to go to Clos Du Bois and Simi Winery tasting rooms and planned a day for the following week to get operational tours of the cellars.

The last and final week.  I continued with my regular weekly tasks of pressure bombing, block checking and now checking the progress of veraison.  We also had to start going out to the blocks with at least 80% veraison to get cluster weights to use for the next round of crop estimates.  We would go out to random vines and cut off all the clusters and put them into a bucket.  Then we weighed the bucket with all the clusters in it to get the total weight of clusters per vine.  After you have that weight you would divide it by the number of vines you counted to get the average weight per cluster.  On a few of the really hot days Rebecca and I went inside to do some computer work so we wouldn’t have to be out in the heat.  On the final, Thursday we went to Clos Du Bois for our operational tour of the cellars and got to see how they run everything.  We also got to see them bottling some wine on the massive bottling line.  It was really neat to see, but also very loud!

The next day, we got to do the same type tour at another winery down the street that is owned by Constellation called Simi Winery.  There was a lot of history that came with the winery as well as old and its original architecture.  We got to see all the tanks, steel and oak, the barrel aging rooms as well as the crush pads where the fruit is first brought to the winery.  In the end, I could not have had a more perfect experience.  I had the privilege of working with the best and most knowledgeable kind people.  I made so many new friends and it just felt like working with one big family!  Maybe one day I will be back there!

Not much else has been going on because we were only trying to get the cluster counts finished.  On the days it was too hot to be outside, I would work on updating all the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) with the current chemicals that we are currently using.  I am happy to say that I finished those and got them all organized.  Another task I recently had was going out to the weather station on the main ranch and trouble shooting with the company why it wasn’t working.  So I drove out there and called like I was instructed to.  Well no wonder it wasn’t working…there was no power and with no power came no program.  So I drove back to the mechanics, got my screwdriver and proceeded back out to the station to undo and move some wires around.  Once that was done, the power came back on and they started uploading the new software, so on Monday I will head back out there and move the wires back to their original places and hopefully it will be up and working just as good as new!

Along with cluster counting came data entry when it got too hot and on the rainy day, well I stayed outside and kept counting!  It was a nice break from the heat so I embraced it.  During the rainy day I saw lots of wild life, from lizards to a bobcat and the osprey that built a nest in the vineyard.  Also, while cluster counting I found some webbing, which usually indicates there is some pest like moths or spider mites.  Either way just informing my supervisor is the best way to go because then she determines if it’s necessary to do anything about it.  I ended up opening one web on the new leaves toward the end of the shoot because I was curious as to what was inside, well I should’ve known better!  Of course some long gray thing squirmed out but I didn’t get a good look at it because I jumped away from it.  Guess I won’t be opening up any more webs that’s for sure.  I also went out to the Cabernet Sauvignon blocks to mark the rows with different color flagging tape for a fertilizer trial that Constellation has offered to take part in.  Upon flagging, I came across some leaves that looked oddly yellow, so I took one off and turned it over to find a ton of leaf hoppers!  They were every where.  Now this is definitely not a good thing so the next day all the Cabernet blocks were suckered (that’s getting rid of the shoots with no fruit or that are not wanted) and leafed in order to decrease these amounts.

             Later in the week, Leland the vineyard manager that manages the ranches in Sonoma, took me and the other intern to them to show us around.  Let me tell you, I LOVED Sonoma.  It was such a neat town, and it just felt good.  We stopped for lunch at a little Italian joint made famous by the show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on Food Network.  It was delicious!  We went to the different sites, which are all on hill or mountains, but either way we seemed to always me walking to the top of something!  One ranch has Zinfandel that is grown for the winery, Ravenswood.  This ranch has been a challenge according to Leland because the land the grapes are being grown on was deemed non-agricultural due to the absence of soil and the presence of boulders, but the land owner insisted on growing the grapes.  The growing conditions might not be ideal but the view, unbelievable.  Once we reached the top, the Golden Gate bridge was visible.  Well it would have been visible if there had been no fog, fog in San Francisco…NO?!  Next on the list to visit was the vineyard at the Ravenswood tasting room, which is the only vineyard in the US and international that Constellation owns that is certified organic!  The last stop was a ranch called Barrica.  It grows mainly Zinfandel along with some other red varieties.  Most of the Zinfandel vines are 150+ years old along with fairly young vines because as soon as the old vines die, they are just replaced with new ones.  Someone may think, well just rip out the old vines and plant all new instead of just randomly replacing them when they die.  An inference that Leland has made as to why he hasn’t been instructed to do this is because these vines are from the “old world” and it’s mainly tradition, plus it’s so cool to see these ancient vines still producing great quality fruit.

Some of the main pests and diseases that I was specifically looking for were thrips (smaller than leafhoppers and they bite!), leafhoppers, grape and vine mealy bugs, mites and predator mites, botrytis and powdery mildew.  Now, to sit there, well stand actually, and inspect a leaf for pests that are hardly visible to the naked eye can be very frustrating, but after I knew what color speck I was initially looking for, it became easier to find them.  Once I found what I thought was a pest, I would look at in under my handy dandy hand lens just to make sure.  I didn’t find much while I was out which is a great thing!  The least pests the better, although sometimes it is hard to control them, especially the non-predatory mites.  They are a pest that is attracted to dust, so vines on the ends of the rows are very susceptible to get mites because of the dirt roads.  Luckily Constellation has a way to help control this.  Once the dirt road become extremely dusty, a spray called Dust Off is sprayed on the roads, but don’t worry it just acts a seal that keeps the dust to a minimum.

The two pictures above are of a leaf hopper.  The one on the left is its actual size and on the right it is just zoomed in.  In small numbers leaf hoppers aren’t that detrimental to the berries; however, in large numbers they can be.  The usually reside on the underside of the leaf and what they do is remove leaf cell contents leaving yellow or brownish spots on the top side of the leaf.  This also helps to determine what leave to examine when walking through the rows.  With the loss of cell contents in the leaf, this can lead to many leaves dying and dropping off the vine which directly affects the berries.  Such things that could happen to them is sunburn and could delay ripening because with less leaves there is less photosynthetic material which can lead to less shoot growth for the following season!  Whoa that was a mouthful!  For those of you who don’t know, a shoot is the part of the plant that actually has the berry clusters on it.

Here is a picture of a Katydid and some other creepy looking bug that I found while I was doing field checks.  Katydids are not a big problem in the vineyard except in large quantities.  They usually just prefer munching on the leaves but sometimes they take bites out of the berries causing an opening for other disease to attack the berries.  Who knows why they take bites out of berries, maybe they just get bored of the leaves and keep trying to see if they will like the berries!  Throughout the day I had a few Katydid enjoy the warmth of my arms!  Not cool!  At one point I felt something, turned and looked at my arm and it was sitting there staring at me.  Note to self: don’t have a stare off with the big green Katydids, their eyes always win!

OK, lets start with Day 1 - Monday June 4th.  I arrived at the offices a few minutes early just so I could figure out if I was even in the right place!  I met the other intern, Rebecca, and then we were introduced with an agriculture safety video and just a brief sit down with one of the supervisors, Keith.  He proceeded to tell us about Constellation and what his job is and then pulled out a map of all the ranches to show us an ariel view of them.  It was amazing to me how he had each ranch memorized as well as each block (that is the term for a section in the vineyard).  Then Eva, one of the vineyard managers, gave us a tour of all the ranches, that were in the area, just to familiarize ourselves with the area because it is a lot to take in when you have no idea where you are to begin with!  Later in the day we were asked to go through all the petiole samples that Oscar, another supervisor who works under Leland and Eva, and make sure that samples from each block in each ranch had been collected.  The petiole samples are important because they get tested in order to get an evaluation of how well the roots are absorbing the nutrients from the soil, or visa versa.  This also helps to see if the vines are getting the correct amount of water needed to be strong and healthy.  We finished double checking that all the samples were collected then put them in a boxed to be shipped off for testing! 4 o’clock soon rolled around and it was time to head home for the day.

Day 2 - Today my task was to go up and down the Hoffman vineyard site and take a look at all the vines to evaluate their growth.  Now some of the vines at this particular ranch in this particular block have something wrong with them.  The leaves have a tendency to be yellow as well as having some burning around the edges.  The shoots also seemed to be affected by this and have some scarring and stunted growth.  My duty was to mark each vine with bright pink flagging tape in order for the morning crew to come in the next day and rip out the sick/dead ones and replant them.  Now the vineyard manager told me she and her boss haven’t figured out what this could be or the cause of the dead vines.  Could it be a pest in the soil or a virus in the plants? that is something they are still figuring out.  The vines and soil are being tested as we speak.  I have heard one possibility of being the cause of this damage, and that is frost damage.  They say the temperatures in the Spring of 2011 may have caused some frost damage to the vines but that is still just speculation.

Day 3 - Yesterday I did not get to finish the entire block, so I went back in the morning to finish checking the vines when I came across this guy!  I am not sure if it was a hawk, vulture, or owl, but if  its head were still around then I might have been able to for sure!  After I finished, I went back to the offices to receive my next assignment for the day.  I was instructed to go out to the River Oaks Valley ranch to RCHB1.  Now I had no idea what this meant but part of our training is, is to learn the names and how to find them, so I took my ranch maps and went off.  Since we had been given a tour a few days earlier I was able to remember certain turns and landmarks and found it the first time!  Now that’s an accomplishment in itself!  After I found the correct block I was to choose 2 rows at random and go down them picking 10 random vines to count clusters on.  Picking at random seems so easy but in reality, it’s not.  You find yourself subconsciously being biased towards the vine.  So what I did was choose one vine and start counting the clusters there, then when I finished that vine I walked a distance of 10 vines and stopped and then that was the next vine to be counted.  Cluster counts on vines are used in a calculation in order to help determine what your crop yield will be for that season which can essentially then be calculated into how much wine the winemakers could make.  As you can see this is an important job to get done because the vineyard managers, the winemakers and the people who run Constellation expect that you counted correctly leading to their estimates.  No pressure or anything! While I was counting clusters, I came across some leaves that looked like they had warts on the top and behind a white spot.  This intrigued me so I brought the question back to Eva, the vineyard manager, and she said they grape erineum mites that are tiny; however, they don’t seem to be harmful to the grapes unless maybe they start to infest and become available in large numbers.

Day 4 - Today was another sort of “getting oriented” day.  But before we head out, Rebecca and I were giving the wonderful task of looking through “vine” mealy bug traps.  There are 2 types of mealy bugs that the vineyard world is concerned with.  Like mentioned above, there is the grape mealy bug and the vine mealy bug.  Grape mealy bug isn’t too detrimental to the grapes again as long as there isn’t an infestation.  However, the female vine mealy bugs are harmful to the vines.  So as we proceeded to look through the traps, we noticed a very large amount of what we thought were vine mealy bugs due to the trap labeling.  Eva came in as was worried also, but eventually we figured out by looking under the microscope that the traps were labeled wrong and had lures with the grape mealy bug’s pheramone in them.  Needless to say, the whole thing was a fiasco!  In the end, we did a lot of microscope work to make sure no vine mealy bugs were present. One major difference about the bugs is their size, which is hardly anything, and the ends of what I call their butts.  One is rounded and one is pointed in a V shape…this is not that easy to distinguish between, so we had a long day of mealy bugs.

After the mealy bug situation was handled, we drove around with the other vineyard manager, Leland, and he showed us some more of the ranches, mainly the ones that he manages (Eva manages the other half).  He showed us some sites that are being redeveloped as well as some different training and growing techniques just to help us become familiar.  Some plants at one of the ranches that stuck out to me were the vines that had be “t-budded.”  This is where a T cut is made in the rootstock and a bud from the vine that is wanted, is placed in it, and the idea is the bud will adapt and push itself to grow out from the new rootstock.  This is an alternate way of redeveloping a vineyard without ripping out the trellis system and vines and then redoing it all.  It was definitely an interesting technique to see…sorry I didn’t grab a picture!!  We got back to the office and it was time to go home, but before we left Eva told us to be at the office at 6 AM to head out with the planting crew!

Day 5 - Well, it’s 6 AM and we are out at the empty vineyard with nothing but the trellis system up and the crew heading out with shovels to make holes for the vines.  Rebecca and I as well as the crew supervisor Roman and some of his guys were in charge of separating the vines into groups: healthy vines with strong roots, small pencil sized vines with weak roots, and dead vines.  Then we were to trim the roots of the healthy vines to minimize the possibility of J-rooting.  This is when the roots grow down like normal then proceed to grow up – not good!  For this block we were working at, I think there would be a total of about 21,000 vines but we only had possession of the first shipment, but it was still a ton of vines we went through.  Finding dead vines was sad but at the same time it was fun to tell the guys who did not speak english, “la planta de uva esta muerto!”  We needed to stay entertained somehow, so learning some more spanish was the key!