What a whirl wind!
Amazing how time flies when you are having fun. And who says working 12 hour days for free isn’t fun? Not me!
Although I wasn’t in the fields collecting the grapes, I was able to participate in many other activities. Some of these activities include working the conveyer belt to make sure that all leaves and “unhappy” grapes are plucked out. The grape clusters are then put through the crusher/destemmer which essentially breaks the skin gently while the destemmer removes the stems or other larger particles.
Depending on the berry quality sometimes we used a shaker table. The shaker table is used after the stems have been removed and serves as the
From here the juice and must (the skins, seeds and pulp) are transported into the tanks where a close eye is kept on how it is developing. Once the fermentation has completed the wine (officially now) will be transported into some sort of bulk aging container, whether this is an oak barrel or stainless
For me one of the most impressive things in this whole process is the amount of organization it takes and the efficiency of everyone who works to create the wine. It was truly amazing to witness. It is one thing to be able to read about the process but to actually see it in person gives a whole new
I will forever be grateful to everyone at Maryhill Winery for letting me participate in the harvest. I learned so much and, as is so often the case, the more I learned; the more I realized I don’t know. Guess I will just have to do it again next year!
