The Day I Made Wine

5AM came fast, but I was faster—up at 4:52. Google Maps said Middleburg, Virginia was about an hour away, but I didn’t want to be late so I left at 5:22. The drive was easy, and dawn broke just as I pulled off the main road into Boxwood Winery.

Ted, a nice guy with the biggest dog I’ve ever seen, greeted me and offered coffee. He gave me a quick tour. Boxwood makes only red wines and roses, and uses the French Bordeaux style of winemaking. They grow all of their own grapes—Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and maybe others—and are known for 2 different blends of red wine (“Boxwood” and “Topiary”) which they make every year as well as 2 rose blends. This year, their winemaker, Adam, was working on a new wine, a 100% Malbec Rose, which was just about done fermenting.

The winemaking room was a huge rectangular space with lofty ceilings. Massive stainless steal fermenting tanks stood on the longest sides of the room, leaving an empty corridor-like space in the middle. Just above the tanks, a thin catwalk lined three of the four walls, allowing winemaking individuals to stand over the tanks, peer in and throw stuff inside. The floor of the room was cement and easily cleanable. A drain with a grate over it ran down the middle of the room and more than a few power hoses hanging coiled around hooks on the walls. Two tall barn-like doors at the end of the winemaking hall opened up to a cemented outdoor area underneath a roof overhang. A huge white 18-wheeler truck was parked a few feet away, and behind that vineyards stretched into forest.

Two golf carts drove up and unloaded about 10 people, workers enlisted to help with the harvest. Their alpha guy—i.e. the dude who spoke English—was named Maximo, and he seemed to know what he was doing. Today, he told me, we would be sorting Cab Franc grapes, which had been picked from the vines 2 days earlier. Crates of these grapes were currently chilling (literally) in the white huge truck, which was somehow refrigerated, in order to kill off any bacteria, insects or other stuff that (ew) shouldn’t be in the wine.

The magic began when Adam arrived. He’d been the winemaker at Boxwood for almost 6 years. I thought I would feel intimidated by The Winemaker, but thankfully he was Canadian—and experience has taught me all Canadians are nice. Adam introduced me to his trusty intern, Ellen, who was also Canadian. I knew I was in good hands.

We were off! The workers started setting up a lot of equipment—a stair-master looking thing, a machine that resembled a bathtub sized cheese grater, and a conveyer belt. Our instructions were to pick out and discard grapes that 1) had a creepy gray fungus called Botrytis, 2) were not yet ripe or 3) had um, vinegarized. The good grapes should be placed on the carrier machine (i.e. the stairmaster), which fed them into the de-stemming machine (a.k.a. the cheese grater), and finally spit them out onto the conveyor belt. The de-stemmed grapes would be collected in a crate. Piece of cake.

Then came the grapes. Over 100 crates of Cab Franc (a small-medium sized black grape) came off the truck and were stacked by the machines. I was salivating. I love grapes.—I often buy 4 bunches at a time (red, green, black and assorted) and eat them all within a day and a half. This was going to be the best job ever!

Not. Within 5 minutes and at least 20 attempts, I had accepted that these grapes were not for me to eat. If they weren’t covered in fungus, mud or inexplicable sliminess, spiders or stink bugs were hiding behind the little berries. (Oddly enough, one semi-portly worker lady standing across from me did not seem phased by any of this and appeared to be eating more grapes than she was tossing on to the stairmaster machine). It was also frustratingly cold out. My fingers had frozen, and I figured out quickly that I was allergic to Botrytis. After 50 minutes, my sinuses were on strike and I feared I might contaminate the whole operation.

Adam took pity on me and moved me inside, offering to show me how to “punch out” a tank of wine. Grateful that I was starting to breathe again, I watched as he climbed up the catwalk above one of the big tanks. “We have Merlot in here. We picked it last week, got it in the tank 3 days ago and bled it yesterday. Today we need to add yeast and really start the fermentation.” I understood about 30% of what he said but smiled and hoped I’d catch on. Adam stirred a large beaker of cloudy water and poured it into the tank. “I just added the yeast. Now I’m going to punch out.” He climbed over the railing of the catwalk and start to walk along the thin ledge of the tank—at least 10 feet above the unforgiving floor. He reached for an 8-foot steel pole that had flat metal disk at one end. Disk-side down, he dipped the pole into the tank and leaned on it. Then he stood back and churned it a few times. “This is punching out. I’m crushing the grapes in the tank.” OH! Like instead of stepping on them! “Right.” He seemed to appreciate my effort. He continued on for 10 minutes, making sure he had churned and crushed every part of the cap (the grape skins at the top of the tank).

I had to ditch any fear of heights before I punched out the next tank, but it was awesome—every time I pushed down the pole, I could see little foamy pink bubbles rise to the top, showing off the fermentation process! But, after two tanks, I needed a rest. Punching out was a workout. I could already feel my upper body getting sore.

Next came “Pour Overs,” a task which Ellen commanded like the pro that she was. Like Adam, she fearlessly climbed all over the tanks, but she was holding a heavy hose that was connected to the bottom of the tank. “All of the juice that comes out of the grapes when they’re punched out is at the bottom, so we need to circulate it over the grapes and skins floating at the top of the tank.” Kneeling on the ledge of the tank, Ellen powered up the hose. She sprayed for about 12 minutes, until all of the juice at the bottom of the tank was trickling down through the top layers of grapes. She kneeled because she had to stay low—if the hose were to be sprayed above the mouth of the tank, the juice would be exposed to too much oxygen.

I did the pour over on the next tank, but after 5 minutes of kneeling on the hard steel, I worried I wouldn’t be able to stand up again. I switched positions from kneeling to squatting and thus discovered my lower body workout of the day.

After 2 punch outs and 3 pour overs, I stood in Adam’s laboratory, panting and fanning myself. He worked like a geeky scientist or wizard, constantly tasting wine samples or grapes, measuring things or jotting notes. He took measurements of juice samples from each tank, monitoring the “BRIX” or sugar level. “The fermenting stops when there’s no more residual sugar. So, I need to see what the BRIX is to figure out how far along the fermenting is.”

At one point, Adam decided that he wanted to increase the alcohol volume of a whole tank. Alcohol is the product of sugar fermenting from yeast, so he explained that he needed to add sugar to raise the ultimate alcohol level. Ellen gathered a large tub, a hose and many bags of sugar. After connecting a hose to the tank, she poured all of the juice from that tank into the tub. Then Adam started dumping in the sugar. “I measured how out much I need for the whole tank. We’ll put it all in this tub then circulate the juice with the sugar around.” After he’d poured about 10 pounds of sugar into the tub of almost-wine, Adam rolled up his sleeves. “Time to mix!” He knelt down and stuck his arms into the tank up to his biceps. It looked like he mixed the sugar into the wine by doing breaststroke pull for about 5 minutes. Then Ellen pumped the sugary juice over the top of the tank and over the cap.

We all had lunch (Boxwood ordered us Thai food!), and then the morning’s activities repeated themselves. I got to do more punch outs and pour overs (i.e. upper and lower body workouts). By 7PM, I was exhausted and bid the crew farewell. Adam and Ellen were going to be there until 10PM. Rachel (Exec. VP of the Winery) took the ‘graveyard shift’—doing the punch outs that needed to be done at midnight. As I drove home, my head was pounding from my allergies and my fingers were stained purple and black. Everyone I’d met that day was going to reconvene again tomorrow morning at 7AM. The day would repeat until all Boxwood’s grapes had been harvested. Thinking of the endless work, I felt really glad that I was not a winemaker.

Despite the challenge to my stamina, I loved my day at Boxwood and couldn’t imagine a better way to learn about the winemaking process. At the end of the day, I definitely had a clear vision of how wine is made:

1. First, grapes are picked off their vines. This appears to happen in one swoop—i.e. ripe and unripe grapes are both harvested (there’s no second harvest for late bloomers).
2. Then, the harvested grapes are chilled for 48 hours to kill off bugs and bacteria.
3. Once chilled, grapes are sorted and rotted, unripe and vinegarized specimens are thrown away.
4. The remaining grapes go through a de-stemmer machine and are then thrown in a huge fermenting tank. (NOTE: I was disturbed to see that the grapes are never washed before they begin fermenting into wine, leaving potential additives including mud, spider webs, spiders and stink bugs to infuse into the wine. Adam tried to reassure me by telling me that the yeast, heat and fermenting process kills everything inside the tank and then everything is strained from the juice. I can’t lie that I’m still slightly troubled.)
5. For 2 days, the grapes are sealed in the tank undergoing ‘whole berry fermentation.” In this process, the grapes on the bottom of the massive tank are crushed under the weight of the grapes on top.
6. On day 2, the tank is “bled,” meaning that the juice, which was naturally crushed out of the bottom layer of grapes, is drained from the tank. Adam uses this juice to make rose wine blends because it’s a nice light pink color. He also measures the juice to gauge the levels of various nutrients (including nitrogen) and sugar. At this point, he can decide whether he’ll need to add nutrients or additional sugar to the juice.
7. On day 3, yeast is added, and the crushing process begins with “punch outs” 3-4 times per day. Each punch out gets more juice out of the bottom layer of grapes and churns the whole tank to move more grapes from the middle layer down to the bottom. Interspersed with punch outs are “pour overs,” in which the juice that has been crushed out of the grapes gets poured over the layer of grapes at the top of the tank. This process keeps the whole tank fermenting evenly.
8. After the yeast is added, Adam and Ellen measure the BRIX (or sugar) level of the wine (and some other things like density) every hour or half hour to see how fast the juice is fermenting. If fermentation stops for some reason, it’s very hard to get it going again. Adam started to describe various tactics, but they were honestly over my head.
9. The punch outs and pour overs continue for 3-4 days, until the last of the residual sugar has been turned into alcohol.
10. When no residual sugar remains, the wine is transferred into wood barrels to begin malolactic fermentation (acid in the wine is somehow turned into lactic acid, which is softer on the tongue). This process continues 1-2 years, and the wine will stay in the barrels until it’s ready to be bottled.

Obviously, there are holes in this picture, but I was appreciative to have gotten this far in comprehending the process. Hopefully, I can come back and volunteer in the springtime: “Hi, um, this is Liz—do you take volunteers to help you blend wine?”