Why my Hands were torn up and why bees are annoying
(Winemaking in Oregon, Part 2)—by Joshua Mason

Before I set out for Oregon a few weeks ago, I had one purpose: to come back with purple hands. What I didn’t realize was that having just purple hands was in fact, lowballing it.

Before the grape harvest is in full effect, winemakers have to take samples of their grapes to see how far they have progressed. Not only this, but performing tests let the winemaker know when precisely to harvest, and can schedule a harvest around these results. As an added bonus, outside wineries that would like to purchase grapes are curious and want to know how the crop is coming as well. This is where I came in after helping clean equipment in the winery.

Now, you just don’t go to a spot in the vineyard and pick a few grapes. The vineyard itself is divided up into select parcels, called “Blocks.” The goal of separating the vineyard up like this is because one style of grape that may thrive in one area may do poorly in another. To give an example of the winery I was at (Maysara Vineyards), there is a serious elevation change from the main entrance to the highest point of the property. Eyeballing it, it is a difference of around 800 feet. At the top of the highest ridge are windy conditions and at the lowest, very calm. Different styles or “clones” of the Pinot Noir that is grown there thrive in each and as a result, provide different, complex aromatics and tastes that will come through in the final product. Given that there are many blocks, many different samples must be selected. In this case, there were more than 21 different samples pulled.

The winemaker, Tahmiene Momtazi would hand select these samples and fill a 5 gallon bucket with grapes from that particular block to bring to me. My job was twofold: to hand crush the grapes into juice so that the juice could be lab tested, and combine the tested juice samples together to help create homemade yeast that would be used to help ferment the juice from sugary juice into alcohol.

How to explain the simplicity of hand crushing: put the grapes and stems into a strainer, take your hands and push as much juice through the strainer into a graduated cylinder. There is a problem with this. The strainer is metal and my hands are not. After a while, the metal starts to tear away the skin. Not enough to make you bleed, but enough to let you know that your hands will soon become raw. Also, you get first hand (no pun intended) experience as to how the skins of the grape color the wine. Yes, skins give wine color. They also give hands color. By the time I was done with this process, my hands were so purple that outsiders would think that I hand painted the end zones for the Minnesota Vikings. Just to let you know, my hands were purple, skin was torn off, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world and would do it again in a heartbeat!

There is one tradeoff to crushing the grapes that is not good: bees. Bees love this juice as though they had found an oasis in the desert. Whether using the crusher or hand crushing, bees tend to swarm to not only the juice, but the grapes before they are crushed as well as the leftover grape skins. They aren’t there to sting you, they just want some of that nectar and if you get in the way of it, they will try their best to get you out of the way. That is why once again, cleaning everything is essential. I digress…

Now once each sample is crushed, they are taken into the lab to, amongst other things, get tested for their “brix” level. Long story short (and simplified), brix signifies the amount of sugar in the grape. Brix is measured either with a hydrometer or a refractometer. These tests actually seek out the amount of sucrose in the sample to give an exact figure. However, wine has many other compositions besides sucrose that combine for sweetness. So the tests are an approximation. Why is this important? Simple, when you ferment juice, you need to use yeast that is also being made to convert sugar into alcohol. If you know how much sugar is in the juice, you will be able to predict the final amount of alcohol knowing that each percentage of brix equals about .55% of alcohol. I say “about” because once again, the brix level is an approximation. The target for a great brix level in Pinot Noir is 24. Samples that were sent to the lab hovered between 23 and 25 brix, making this an outstanding harvest.

Once the tests are performed, the samples were combined in a container that resemble water cooler containers and then warmed up by simple use of an electric blanket covering the vessels. This will become the yeast that starts fermentation down the road for what critics and winemakers alike are calling the best vintage in Oregon in the past 50 years.

In my final article in this series, I will talk about the fermentation process and my final days at the Maysara winery.

--Cheers!