Living the Dream
A recent conversation between two Maine winemakers:
“I had my first harvest anxiety dream of the season last night.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“I forgot to clean a tank, all of the bungs popped out and a valve opened itself in the middle of the night.”
“Typical.”
Of course, none of these things actually happened, nor will they since we are pros here at Cellardoor (people respect you more when you at least appear confident), but I have seen much worse. … Should I mention that in a former winemaking endeavor a coworker started his pump for a pump-over, while walking away to grab a smoke. This shouldn’t have been a problem, since the pump-over (an activity in which fermenting must is pumped from the bottom of a tank over the top to give the yeast oxygen, keep the cap wet and extract tannins and phenolics) usually runs around 10 minutes, except for the fact that his partner (who was supposed to be manning the hose) had went to use the restroom. The bungee chord strapping the hose to the catwalk must have held long enough for the pump operator to walk away with confidence. Let’s just say the cellar had a nice ruby tinge to it when they returned. I could go on.
The truth of the matter is that harvest never goes according to plan—regardless of a winery’s price point or worldly status. You just have to hope that sometime in late November or early December when your brain has finally filtered out most of the carbon dioxide and oxygen starts flowing again that the challenges were more easily conquered than expected. Somehow the ship always seems to right itself. And despite the ridiculous hours and near heart attacks, harvest is when winemakers feel the most alive. It is honestly the best time of year. There is a saying throughout the industry (not “it takes a lot of good beer to make good wine,” which is also true) that is often tiredly mumbled during such tasks as scrubbing tanks, punching down for the 20th time that week, or crushing that last ton before sunset—“living the dream.” We say it as a joke, but there is probably more truth to it than we would let on.
In Maine we start early. In potentially less than one month’s time eight tons of wild Maine blueberries from Clary Hill Farm in Union Maine will be showing up at the Cellardoor. This is very exciting for us, as we plan on making a serious red wine style blueberry to complement our off-dry rose style. We also have an unprecedented amount of red grapes arriving throughout September and October, prompting us to convert our current cellar into more of a red wine friendly environment. We will be receiving such interesting varieties as Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Barbera and Sangiovese. The barrel program calls for a mix of new French oak, French re-coopered, and French neutral barrels on our traditional Rhone varieties Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre. We will be using new Hungarian oak, French re-cooped and neutral French in our Italian varieties Sangiovese and Barabera. And we will add some new French coopered American oak to the Zin and Petite Sirah. For the Maine blueberries, however, we are going strictly American coopered Kentucky oak. I would say you could drink it with apple pie, but this will be more of a steak wine. On the white side, we will be making a dry Viognier and Roussanne, an off-dry Riesling and semi-sweet late-harvest Chenin Blanc. While we are very excited to bring these grapes in from select vineyards from across the country, we also can’t wait to start working with the varieties that we just planted this spring, including Marquette, LaCrescent, Frontenac Gris and Frontenac Blanc. Expect to see some Maine grown estate wines within the next couple of years. Hope the sun shines for the rest of the summer!
Cheers,
Aaron