Real World Winery

It's done, my friends. Yesterday was the last day of Real World Winery. It was my last day working as a harvest intern at Elvira Calle Bodega in Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina, bringing my first winemaking experience to conclusion. I've heard that some of you were under the wild impression that I was lazily passing my days in an Argentine hammock taking full advantage of the lengthy siesta rituals observed here. No, the past two months have been anything but a siesta, more like baptism by fire!

I took on this job as a harvest intern, partly because I've always wanted to work a grape harvest, but also because I've been tossing around the idea of working in the wine industry professionally, post my semi-sabbatical. Working a harvest and learning how this wine stuff is really produced seemed like a smart idea. Turns out it wasn't just smart, it was brilliant!!

It's a small bodega so I had the opportunity to do about everything. I spent time in the lab learning how to analyze the grape juice coming in for this year's vintage and the wine from past vintages. I also spent a great deal of time selecting and sorting through the various deliveries of grapes until ridiculous hours in the morning. It was in those wee hours that I did my most English teaching too. My fellow Argentine counterparts kept wanting me to remind them how to say "I like beer". To be honest, the thought of becoming a sworn beer connoisseur, in those cold deliriously exhausting hours starring down 100 boxes of grapes left to go was pure intelligence. There were plenty of bee stings to be had in two months and there was the typical dousing of wine, or wine blessing we like to call it, that anyone would expect in a winery. I ran up and downstairs, pulled pumps and hoses around, took readings and samples, cleaned out tanks and buckets, swept and washed floors, learned to roll up a mean water hose and squeegee uphill. The only chore of basic winery work I feel that may have gone unmastered is shoveling. Of the six of us on the production team, my shoveling was found lacking right up until the end. There seems to be some flip of the wrist that evades me, but luckily all my compatriots, Spanish and English alike, were gracious the entire way.

Amongst the all-star cast of characters on Real World Winery, there were 2 intern winemakers form California who turned out to be the best teachers on anything wine and California a gal could ask for. Both have transversed the globe working for different wineries and have excellent palettes from which to learn. Both also love to eat good food and talk about it........so when you’re out in rural Argentina, after a 12 hour work day, what else is there to do but mix up a mushroom risotto with prosciutto paired ever so elegantly with a bottle of Semillon, then sit around for several hours talking about it and various other sundry topics! I already look forward to our first reunion over a few pints of beer to recount our stories.

And so as Fall slowly tapers into the cold begins of Winter here in the South, harvest 2010 at Elvira Calle, aka: Real World Winery, comes to an end. With my first winemaking experience now under my belt, I’m wiser to the world, what I want from it, and I'm confidently looking forward with full anticipation...