(A quarter of) A Year in Sonoma and Napa: My 2014 Harvest Internship

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while as I think it might be of interest to people here, and it’s also to help me reminisce about one of the most exciting periods of my life. So here goes, a description and interpretation of my first harvest and my first experience in production.

For those that don’t know me well, I spent just under 7 years at a major retailer in Texas. I started in the humidor (I’ve been a pretty serious cigar enjoyer since I turned 18), spent some time in the beer department (before the major boom in craft beer interest) and finally ended up in wine. After years of acquiring knowledge, mostly independently, years of building a client base, running what I’d consider a successful wine department in a great store and graduating from college, I felt I was unappreciated and decided to explore other avenues. I had visited Napa/Sonoma 3 or 4 times during my time at this retailer, even going to Spain on an importer sponsored trip. The idea of working in a cellar under the guidance of experienced minds really appealed to me. I knew it would mean a pay cut, but I started putting out feelers for a harvest internship with my suppliers and distributors as they frequently met with winemakers and winery representatives. In July 2013 I was introduced to a native Texan who was a cellar master in Sonoma and agreed to hire me while he was in town showing wine. Timing wasn’t right to start in 2013, so we agreed to stay in touch for 2014 harvest. I sent my resume in early 2014 to formally apply for the internship and was confirmed a spot on the team shortly thereafter.

After months of stressing over housing, and not finding anything, it was time to hit the road. My fiancee agreed to make the drive with me from Houston to Sonoma and return to Houston via airplane. I packed up a couple duffel bags and a few Rubbermaid containers with clothes and essentials and we left. We took a long route, making a mini-vacation of it. We drove NW towards Taos, NM to spend the night with a friend. After 15 hours of nonstop driving a bed was what we needed. Then on to Santa Fe for lunch, and onwards towards Flagstaff, AZ for a far too brief visit at the Grand Canyon. Then on to Las Vegas, Paso Robles and finally Napa.

Still having no housing, I was to spend the night at the cellar master’s house in Kenwood but I made a quick connection with a landlord on Craigslist and found the room I am currently renting sandwiched right between Carneros and Browns Valley, a quick 13 minute drive to the winery. After dropping my better half off at the airport and having two days to myself, I was to begin work.

The winery where I work is a custom crush facility, with about a dozen clients. Some recognizable names, some more obscure. When I began working we were preparing for a series of large bottlings, gearing up for harvest and continuing day-to-day operations. My first few days were spent inside tanks, drenched head to toe in peroxy and citric acid, and for some reason it seemed right. The next task they kept me on was cleaning/steaming/rinsing barrels as we did some rackings. It was pretty monotonous, but there’s something about having your hands on wine barrels all day, spinning barrels, centering racks…very zen like. Then some topping work orders, filling barrels as the wine evaporates. Again, not the most exciting work but it’s different for someone wired like us, spending all day surrounded by wine, somehow everything I did was rewarding. We did two full days of bottling with a mobile bottling line and a few half days on the small bottling line we had in house. About three weeks in we had out first fruit, some pretty early Pinot Noir from Santa Cruz.

We had a few dry runs setting up the equipment. I’m fortunate to have worked with some of the gear we have. A metered hopper to dump into which drops the fruit onto an elevator to go to the top of the destemmer/crusher. Then onto a shaker table for sorting and then either into macro bins or up another elevator into a tank. We had an optical sorter from the day I started but didn’t get it online until about halfway through the season. The client that first brought in fruit is a fan of whole-cluster Pinot Noir so it was interesting to see how he made the decision on what percentage to de-stem, if at all. After that round it was mostly whites, of course Chardonnay, Grenache Blanc, Verdelho, Viognier, Malvasia Blanca, and one lot of Sauvignon Blanc. For reds we dealt with lots of Pinot Noir, Carignan, Grenache, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Mourvedre, and Cinsault (might be missing one or two).

After the first two fruit drops we had our first major crisis: the aforementioned cellar master quit with no notice. We came in on a Monday wondering when he’d show up and then word made its way around that he’d left. He was in charge of many day-to-day operations that I never considered when I thought about winery work, suddenly everyone’s role changed. Our cellar foreman began taking on tasks that he was unprepared for and his patience grew short. Later into the season he broke his hand and things got even harder. Because the cellar master left, we all had to mature a little bit. On one of my first few days we were told “you might get to do an inoculation or two this year.” I ended up inoculating 70+ lots, with only a handful being done by someone else. We also had an intern fail to show up, so we were down 2 people early into harvest. Everyone was so busy and stretched so thin that it took almost a month to hire anyone else. Between the earthquake and last weekend (my first full weekend off) I only had 3 days off. I’m not complaining, though, I’m here to work and I rarely complained about the hours.

We had one light week in between the Pinot Noir/Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon/Zinfandel/Syrah pushes and management was able to hire a few temporary workers and a full time cellar worker with an impressive resume. Then things really smoothed out. Cleaning equipment became the main job of the temp workers, so I was able to do more…“interesting” work. Daily brix reads, pumpovers/punchdowns, rack and returns, draining and pressing, barreling down, malolactic fermentation inoculations, I did it all. I asserted myself and if there was something I didn’t know how to do, I wanted to know how to do it and dammit I learned. However, the more I learned, the less I felt I knew. I just couldn’t imagine how many factors there were when it came to making wine. I always thought about it as an art steeped in science, but it is so much more scientific than I expected.

This post was a lot longer than I anticipated it being, but hopefully it’s an enjoyable read. I really enjoyed my first harvest experience and hope to keep going, but since I was hired as an intern my future at the current winery is still a bit up in the air. I’d like to think I’ve made a strong enough impression to be asked to stay on.

I fancy myself a good writer, but I wrote this over several days and my attention has been a bit sporadic. I’m happy to answer questions and clear up details.

Great read Nolan. Glad to hear you pulled through after the early issues you were faced with.

Thanks, Brian. After I hit post I’m realizing so many details I’ve left out, I may periodically update for the next few days.

First update: I want to share all of the AVAs and vineyards (that I can remember) that we had fruit from.
Santa Cruz (Nelson, others)
Carneros-Sonoma (Sangiacamo, Roberts Road, others)
Carneros-Napa
Sonoma Coast (Falstaff, McDougall Ranch, others)
Dry Creek Valley (Grist)
Sonoma Valley (Caton Vineyards, Los Chamizal, others)
Napa Valley (George III, Dragonfly, Stagecoach, Konrad, Cypress, Garvey, Broken Rock, others)
Anderson Valley (Savoy)
Russian River Valley
Suisun Valley
Redwood Valley (Cerise, Hawkeye Ranch)
Contra Costa
Santa Barbara (White Hawk)

Again, these are just the ones I can remember and know for sure we dealt with.

Nice read, Nolan. Seems like you were thrown into the fire and handled yourself well. When I make it up there, we have to sit down and have a couple of beers.

Thanks, Joe. Some of the most consistent compliments I was paid were about my attitude, I never snapped at anyone and I never felt overwhelmed. Even if I felt chaotic inside, I refused to show it. Making someone smile or laugh really changes morale quickly, I used my humor a LOT lol.

Great Read Nolan and congrats on making it through successfully. It’s amazing what positive outlook and attitude can do when faced with tough situations. At the end of the day you can either make chicken salad or chicken… out of a situation. Good stuff.

Now, where do you go from here ?

Very enjoyable, good for you to grow so quickly. Glad you didn’t bitch about the hours, always hard for me to find sympathy towards that plight.

Next you could work in the vineyard and see the REAL heavy lifting! After all the growers are the ones who really MAKE the wine.

Great read. Sounds like you learned a bunch in a short time!

Sounds like you passed the audition.

It does make a lot of sense to want to stay on. I think also you may want to look at other experience. Each winery does things differently due to various constraints and preferences. I think experiencing and understanding the whys of a different take on things is really helpful. One option would be to secure a harvest internship in the southern hemisphere. Also, Casey brought up vineyard work. Getting some hands-on experience with each of the vineyard tasks is a good idea. Whether its a hardcore internship throughout the year or helping out piecemeal on weekends, that’s something to think about.

Nolan,

sounds like an awesome experience, something I’m sure you will never forget! I did the same thing this year but started out in the vineyard (for a winery/vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills). Emailed and asked If I could spend a day once a week learning vineyard practices since I had been making wine for years now with absolutely no knowledge of viticulture, found it almost embarrassing. Anyways ended up interning from May until Sept (had to work 6 days a week to make up the hours for my 8-5 job) this year with 6 hours of driving round trip from Huntington Beach. They invited me to work crush with them, couldn’t say no! I knocked out my 1-ton of contracted pinot noir (home wine) in august and was able to work crush with them in Early September and Hey I ended up even buying an extra 1-ton of pinot noir from them once the internship ended, I now have 4 barrels of pinot noir for family and friends.

Anyways, Casey is right, the real work is out in the vineyard neener I busted my ass off out there (shoot positioning week after week, leaf pulling, cluster dropping, etc.). Those vineyard workers bust their tails off each and every day!!! Now I understand what kind of hard work its going to take if I ever get the hell out of Southern California and find a job in the Engineering world in Oregon or Washington State and buy a nice property with an acre and plant my own hobby vineyard. That’s my goal in life :slight_smile: I’m just now digging thru the photos I took each week… was amazing to see the development of the fruit from early veraison up until harvest (most beautiful transition of colors)… memories I wont ever forget… champagne.gif

Glad to hear you enjoyed your experience. Sounds like you got to do a lot of different things after some monotony leading up to and thru bottling. Keeping the work hours at a reasonable level if your not taking days off increases sanity and safety a lot.

Fixed it for ya, Cerise is in Anderson Valley, just above and to the east of Boonville.
Anderson Valley (Savoy, Cerise)
Redwood Valley (Hawkeye Ranch)

I agree with you Casey especially when winemakers get out of the way and let the vineyard shine thru! All to often overripe late picked fruit has to be fixed into wine when all that is needed to make wine is already on and in the grapes.

Very nice read Nolan, thanks for sharing.

Well done, Nolan. Sounds like you caught the bug.

To be a true winemaker, you must master the art of getting IN Casey’s way and driving him to the brink of insanity. It is, after all, a winemaker’s professional duty vis-a-vis a vineyard manager.

Repeat after me and practice these phrases:

“I know you just finished one, but I need you to make one more thinning pass.”

“I can only take 1.2 tons. 1.4 is way too much. Can’t you just sell it to someone else?”

“Can’t we just use some of your boxes?” or, even better: “We’ve decided to switch to all FYBs this vintage.”

Thursday: “The fruit’s a week out.” Saturday: “This stuff really has to come off tomorrow or it’ll be a total loss.”

“I realize it’s 29 Brix. Flavors just aren’t there. A couple more weeks.”

Epic Nate.

Casey does tear it up out there! ;-D


Hey you guys quit hijacking this young mans thread.

Nate, I’ve heard everyone one of those AND more!

Realized today it’s actually a third of a year…

Nolan - I am proud of ya man. Great read and a great experience. Sometimes I wish I had the guts to do something like this. But no way I have the patience that you discussed. Sincere hopes you are able to find stability out there and get to live your passion.

Brad

Hey Brad, been a while!

Thanks for your kind words.

Nolan,

Wow, it looks like you had quite the fall. As the saying goes, “Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”

I look forward to seeing you and hearing the stories in person in a couple of weeks.

Great read Nolan, I always enjoy hearing the stories of people who are coming from other careers (as I fit in that category). With regards to breaking into the industry full-time, I’ve found crush to be the easy part. Once the last lots are barreled down it becomes very difficult to find work until it picks up again in the spring (other than bottling). I’ve hopped around a bit which has been great for exposure to different techniques and mindsets but hasn’t helped with building a network. If you know where you want to be, move there and things will work out. You’ve obviously already demonstrated the necessary hustle, and things are that much easier when you know exactly what you’re working towards.