Not Richland.
I can't get it through my head that the winery is not in Richland. My limited research has me thinking there might not even be a Richland in all of California. Leave it to me to send missives to friends letting them know that I work in one of the few town names that doesn't actually exist in California.
Monday:
Not much in the way of work so far. Met Big Papi, my boss, at the winery on Monday afternoon as he returned from fetching his second picking of Gamay Noir. Helped on the line by wielding a trusty plastic shovel and playing with stems. The only real excitement was when the cinch strap on an elevated bin of grapes broke loose from the forklift that was tilting it into the crusher. Papi got whacked by the metal hook first, then it went slamming into my ankle. My heroics consisted of me running to the kill switch, thinking I was preventing the bin, and possibly the reeling Papi from falling into the de-stemmer pit. As I listed motivations for my concern in that order: bin, Papi, I am not sure he formed a greater or lesser impression of me. He does seem to like his grapes.
Then I got a brief rundown on how to fix and sterilize barrels. Big P hired a friend of his, Johnny D., to help out as well, and though Johnny is a nice enough guy, he seems to have burned most of his candle in the years after he moved to Berkeley in the late sixties. It was apparently the third time Steve had showed him how to hook up all the equipment involved in the 4 steps, and Johnny was still dwelling on how many steps there were and in what order they were to be performed.
Tuesday:
With The Man in New York for a distributor function we were left alone to practice what Johnny had seen and I was told about barrel maintenance. Wrangling 120 gallon barrels is like trying to move a miniaturized, hollow and immobilized sumo wrestler whose discomfort can only be judged by how many rings fall off of the barrel. In the 45 minutes it took me to set up, Johnny managed to piss off some barrels, enough so that what was supposed to be "tightening" turned into "re-fitting."
Johnny thought that since Big P. told him that, on a relaxed day, someone who knows what they are doing can finish six barrels that we should make it through two and be lucky. I was thinking assembly line style and that we could at least finish 6, if not more. I think his attitude is the inverse of mine: he didn't leave a job, pack his belongings and drive 625 miles for the job. Just as we were about to finish the last two barrels, a fuse blew that no one knew how to find or fix. I am glad the must-buster didn’t blow the same fuse when fruit was coming in. Would have been a bad scene.
As that was our only work until Papi returns on Thursday I spent Wednesday in a holding pattern to see if the winery operators could get the problem fixed. This involved sitting in my car, now illegally parked, talking on my cell phone that keeps beeping at me that I am over my minutes and under my payments for the month. The meter maid is my enemy and I look over my shoulder like a convict. I finally buy an egg salad sandwhich that I forget in the car for twelve hot hours. It didn't kill me.
The setup is a little disappointing, as I thought that either the winery was Papi's or that he was making his own wine as well as consulting. Apparently the rent became too steep on the Warehouse winery in the Bay area that he was sharing space in last year, and this is his first year at a custom crush facility near what is apparently not Richland 35 minutes from the flat I'm in towards Sacramento. When I asked Mueller, one of the two guys who runs the facility, if he worked only for Papi he sniped back "no, Papi is my client." Funny, when I wrote the above sentence I wrote "ruins" instead of runs. Lapsus Calumni, a written Freudian slip. God bless my Reed education.
Sveum, who is the consulting oenologist for the facility (and who apparently used to have a winery in Oregon in the early 90s/late 80s) is a nice guy who seems to like my willingness to admit that sometimes it is fun to be a rational human being. The only problem I have with him is his lack of attention to detail (forgetting to put a pretty essential support bar on the forklift, creating the falling bin problem) and his snide attitude towards Papi, who, despite my cynical tone, seemed like an easy to like guy in my short exposure to him. Especially if he is a "client."
The winery was recently bought by a group of "investors" or the "three BMWs and a car I can never remember in the parking lot" as I have come to call them. They are currently trying to figure out what to do with the 40+ acres of increasingly ripe and bird-picked merlot and syrah on the estate while also trying to figure out how to maximize the cost per square foot of the facility. I am privy to many of the complaints and exhortations they will make to Papi on Friday as I thought they were OSHA when they passed through a building where I was hammering rings into place and decided to pretend I didn't speak English. I am a little wary about how this will work out.
Spent the day in the holding pattern and then driving to Oakland to look at three places to live. The most appealing, in a really depressing way, was the entire bottom floor of a large Victorian in a really sketchy neighborhood. The rent was $600 and there was about 1500 sq ft. of fake hardwood with a big backyard. The catch: apparently there was a roommate who was never there except to crash a couple of times a week. Her seven cats ran the place the rest of the time. I told the landlord that Misha the dog is allergic to cats.
High point yesterday: I got to taste Viongier that had yet to undergo malolactic, making up for the three days I didn't have a toothbrush.
High point today (so far): walking into a deli owned by a recently immigrated Palestinian family who were working a hard lunch rush but watching TV to see about Rita, that soon-to-be star hurricane. "I hear we will be okay if it moves quickly. It won't hurt us then." Do you have to have been born somewhere else to feel attached to the rest of the country you are living in?
Monday:
Not much in the way of work so far. Met Big Papi, my boss, at the winery on Monday afternoon as he returned from fetching his second picking of Gamay Noir. Helped on the line by wielding a trusty plastic shovel and playing with stems. The only real excitement was when the cinch strap on an elevated bin of grapes broke loose from the forklift that was tilting it into the crusher. Papi got whacked by the metal hook first, then it went slamming into my ankle. My heroics consisted of me running to the kill switch, thinking I was preventing the bin, and possibly the reeling Papi from falling into the de-stemmer pit. As I listed motivations for my concern in that order: bin, Papi, I am not sure he formed a greater or lesser impression of me. He does seem to like his grapes.
Then I got a brief rundown on how to fix and sterilize barrels. Big P hired a friend of his, Johnny D., to help out as well, and though Johnny is a nice enough guy, he seems to have burned most of his candle in the years after he moved to Berkeley in the late sixties. It was apparently the third time Steve had showed him how to hook up all the equipment involved in the 4 steps, and Johnny was still dwelling on how many steps there were and in what order they were to be performed.
Tuesday:
With The Man in New York for a distributor function we were left alone to practice what Johnny had seen and I was told about barrel maintenance. Wrangling 120 gallon barrels is like trying to move a miniaturized, hollow and immobilized sumo wrestler whose discomfort can only be judged by how many rings fall off of the barrel. In the 45 minutes it took me to set up, Johnny managed to piss off some barrels, enough so that what was supposed to be "tightening" turned into "re-fitting."
Johnny thought that since Big P. told him that, on a relaxed day, someone who knows what they are doing can finish six barrels that we should make it through two and be lucky. I was thinking assembly line style and that we could at least finish 6, if not more. I think his attitude is the inverse of mine: he didn't leave a job, pack his belongings and drive 625 miles for the job. Just as we were about to finish the last two barrels, a fuse blew that no one knew how to find or fix. I am glad the must-buster didn’t blow the same fuse when fruit was coming in. Would have been a bad scene.
As that was our only work until Papi returns on Thursday I spent Wednesday in a holding pattern to see if the winery operators could get the problem fixed. This involved sitting in my car, now illegally parked, talking on my cell phone that keeps beeping at me that I am over my minutes and under my payments for the month. The meter maid is my enemy and I look over my shoulder like a convict. I finally buy an egg salad sandwhich that I forget in the car for twelve hot hours. It didn't kill me.
The setup is a little disappointing, as I thought that either the winery was Papi's or that he was making his own wine as well as consulting. Apparently the rent became too steep on the Warehouse winery in the Bay area that he was sharing space in last year, and this is his first year at a custom crush facility near what is apparently not Richland 35 minutes from the flat I'm in towards Sacramento. When I asked Mueller, one of the two guys who runs the facility, if he worked only for Papi he sniped back "no, Papi is my client." Funny, when I wrote the above sentence I wrote "ruins" instead of runs. Lapsus Calumni, a written Freudian slip. God bless my Reed education.
Sveum, who is the consulting oenologist for the facility (and who apparently used to have a winery in Oregon in the early 90s/late 80s) is a nice guy who seems to like my willingness to admit that sometimes it is fun to be a rational human being. The only problem I have with him is his lack of attention to detail (forgetting to put a pretty essential support bar on the forklift, creating the falling bin problem) and his snide attitude towards Papi, who, despite my cynical tone, seemed like an easy to like guy in my short exposure to him. Especially if he is a "client."
The winery was recently bought by a group of "investors" or the "three BMWs and a car I can never remember in the parking lot" as I have come to call them. They are currently trying to figure out what to do with the 40+ acres of increasingly ripe and bird-picked merlot and syrah on the estate while also trying to figure out how to maximize the cost per square foot of the facility. I am privy to many of the complaints and exhortations they will make to Papi on Friday as I thought they were OSHA when they passed through a building where I was hammering rings into place and decided to pretend I didn't speak English. I am a little wary about how this will work out.
Spent the day in the holding pattern and then driving to Oakland to look at three places to live. The most appealing, in a really depressing way, was the entire bottom floor of a large Victorian in a really sketchy neighborhood. The rent was $600 and there was about 1500 sq ft. of fake hardwood with a big backyard. The catch: apparently there was a roommate who was never there except to crash a couple of times a week. Her seven cats ran the place the rest of the time. I told the landlord that Misha the dog is allergic to cats.
High point yesterday: I got to taste Viongier that had yet to undergo malolactic, making up for the three days I didn't have a toothbrush.
High point today (so far): walking into a deli owned by a recently immigrated Palestinian family who were working a hard lunch rush but watching TV to see about Rita, that soon-to-be star hurricane. "I hear we will be okay if it moves quickly. It won't hurt us then." Do you have to have been born somewhere else to feel attached to the rest of the country you are living in?
posted by Jassmond at 8:59 PM
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