There's no substitute for life experience. I've been graced with amazing teachers whom I consider masters in their specified field. "Lessons From..." is my attempt to share, digest, and remember wisdom from those masters. They are specific to a craft and just as in life, the micro extends into the macro.
Victor and the Vines

Victor Abascal, owner/winemaker at Vines on the Marycrest, started a lifetime ago as a renegade vintner on a weed infested corner of Marycrest Manor in Culver City. After months of clearing the field and planting his new vines, the nuns that ran the Manor found out about his experiment. Thinking that these plants were of the marijuana varietal, the authorities were called in. With each plant bearing his name on their tag, Victor was soon found out. No charges were pressed, but a new home to practice his craft was needed.
Paso Robles was calling him.

Nearly 30 years later, I'm helping Victor harvest and process his 26 acres of sustainably dry farmed land, here at Vines at the Marycrest (a name honoring that history).
As expected, I'm learning so much about life, as well as, how to make wine.
Patience. Persistence. It's Brutal.
There were many long hot days that started before the sun crested, the steep hill shading Carlotta's Vineyard (the lower vineyard, which had screeching bird of prey calls through a speaker every 10 minutes.) Aptly, I nicknamed it Raptor Alley, home to the grapes used in Spanish Bombs. During my first week, we picked tempranillo which the bees had gotten to, before us. With so much critter damage, the fruit risked being spoiled. Painstackingly, we picked out as much damage from the hundreds of clusters as we could. It took two extra days of picking in 100+ degree heat. Eventually taking the sage advice of Jenni, we picked one ton of fruit and sorted it in the coolness of the winery (which took an extra two days to process).
Understand the restrictions of your tools.

I must of lifted about 8,000 lbs of grapes, during the course of the harvest, from a pitchfork into a de stemmer. While the grape clusters were still on the pitch fork, I'd sort out anything that wouldn't be tasty to drink (ie leaves, bad berries, spiders and pincher bugs). Victor cleaned the bin of the stray jacks that have sneaked their way through the time tested 30 year old Italian-made sorting machine. If it was suspected of being clogged, the remedy were swift knocks to the side of the machine.
One ton of grapes equals 11ish hours of work... for some wineries a ton of grapes are processed in 25... 45 minutes. But the slow and steady process of blood, sweat and tears hasn't restricted Victor from crafting award winning wine.
Rinse off the residual sugars as soon as you can. It gets sticky, attracts tiny flies, it's harder to clean later, etc. etc.

Just don't let them spoil. Guide them, not overdo it.

Victor received an anecdote from the wine maker he interned for, "You're not making a watch. I believe that it's a combination of 10 percent the effects of the wine maker, 90 percent the rest (harvest time, condition of the fruit, equipment of winery)."
Listen, observe, and be flexible. So Many Decisions. Timing is everything.

During the course of harvest, decisions are a plenty. Will we pick these under ripe zinfandel now before the deer get to them, or will we take a chance and let them mature? Do we have enough ganache or will have to buy more?
It's like a marathon of puzzle solving.
The hardships of the last harvest doesn't linger long. Victor says that each season he suffers from some amnesia, that fades a few days into the new harvest. Like the recollection of a forgotten song, it comes back piece by piece and he remembers just how grueling fall will likely be.
And grueling it was.
Yet through those intense months, where we worked before the sun rose; was, but, a glimpse into decades of hard work, passion and energy. This former almond orchard has been transformed into the perfect space for Victor's dream, that is Vines on the Marycrest.

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