Winemakers: what's the least "sexy" part of what you do?

WINE TALK
41

[winner.gif]

The reporting, tax filing etc. makes cleaning seem like a day off.

I’d put collections as #2. I kind of like the sales part, but that’s me…

42

+1 on collections. For the first time in 20+ years I had to take two people to court in 2018. So much glamour…

43

A load of machine harvest cabernet came in from Monterrey one harvest. As Enologist, 2 years into my career, I had to check the load. I wanted to reject it when I found a family of mice drownd in the juicy mess, but I was over-ruled. I spent every second I could pulling out dead mice before the valley bins were dumped onto the auger (and I’m absolutely positive I fished them ALL out.)

44

I feel the same. Love wine and love beer no need to make either. As a loose reference/analogy I used to to use the following anecdote on job interviews:

Interviewer: How did you get into computers?
Me: When I was 13 I asked my parents for catchers equipment (glove, padding, helmet) for little league baseball. I got a commodore 64 computer instead. A few days/weeks later I asked my parents for games for my new computer. They got me 2 books, 1 on how to program basic and 1 with dozens of programs written out in basic code. I learned at a very early age I wanted to work with computer but yet never do programming.
Interviewer: inevitably laughs

45

Court def not sexy!

X 3 in the US for collections w negative results (filed bankruptcy).

X 1 in Spain because former farm manager both attempted raping several female workers but none had ever come forward until we fired him for smacking our enologist at the time on her ars. He protested 3 times in the tribunals lastly at the level of the autonomous government of Andalucía (think of State Supreme Court). We prevailed all three times. Never want to have to go through that again…

46

No, there isn’t anything about the cleaning that requires highly skilled labor, but when I am getting ready to use the press at harvest, I have the potential for 100% of quality in the fruit(and about $15000 in fruit cost) per load going in to press, pump, and tank.
When I am racking barrels to tank for bottling, I have worked for nearly two years on the wine. Keeping it as close to 100% of quality as I possibly could have, sweating every detail and steadfastly doing everything I can to keep a spoilable product from going south. And 10 barrels(250 cases) of a vineyard designate is $108,000 in the tank.

I am just not going to leave that to some low wage temp making $14/hour. (A temp because I don’t need that body otherwise) I may not enjoy cleaning, but I am definitely not hiring it out.

47

Stopped up drains are high on the list, and I don’t love the paperwork but after 18 years tech sheets are also not sexy.

There’s also the reality of flying into town to do a wine dinner for 40 people in a restaurant, and finding out the Chef really couldn’t care less and handed the menu and dinner off to his 22yr old chef de cuisine who knows zero about food pairing(or that the wines are from Oregon…).

48

Stopped up drains is a good one. Those suck.

49

That’s a thing? Depressing.

50

Yeah, this past Dec. I had a machista chef that did the most bizarre tasting, starting the evening off with my Nolados with no pairing because he was being a D.O. snob and did not want to recognise the DO Granada (told me I could not talk about my wine until the very end). Ha he didn’t know me very well [swearing.gif] I talked as much as I wanted… After my wine he went on to whites, then younger Rioja’s, then Cava’s, the older Rioja’s…bizarre. The group was completely lost and complained to the owners of which a couple of weeks later they fired him.

51

Wine dinners with morons: blue cheese “fondue” over seared ahi tuna. Disgusting.

52

[barf1.gif]

53

I told the rep it would be fine if they never scheduled me to do anything with that account ever again.

54

Wine dinners with morons:

Hey, I resemble that remark!

blue cheese “fondue” over seared ahi tuna. Disgusting.

That’s what makes the world so “interesting” (and so frustrating). The chef thought that this dish was “sexy”.

55

I ate it… in my defense, having lived in the third world had taught me to be a polite eater.

56

I mean, if we thought of our winery staff as ‘some low wage temp’ and ‘that body’ we’d probably get half-ass work, too. Most people want to do great work if given the training, opportunity and support to do so. We work to find people that have an affinity for the process, and work to keep them year round and for several years. We find it takes about three full years on the crew before a cellarhand becomes pretty autonomous with their work.

57

And at 3 years if they’re being paid minimum wage, then there is a problem.

Most people do like to do good work, and if you’re production is high enough(or your price point is) to support a year round cellar hand, that’s great but I hope they make more than $10-12/hr(minimum wage for the moment). At 4000-5000 cases a full time cellar person doesn’t pencil out. So a “minimum wage” person on staff is either myself, my partner, or a temp. Harvest is a bit different, we have a small crew, most of whom have been a part of the process for years(and they still don’t get paid what they should, even though it’s over minimum wage).

58

Yeah. They can be weird. I remember a course of Dill Pickle Soup once. Wow. Smelly fish is all too common as well.

59

Ian, you trying to put Marcus down for being realistic?

60

They never tell you about the swarm of fruit flies during harvest…