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2006 CrushToday at the Winery - September 18, 2006Today I started my volunteer job at the winery. Last week was jury duty (luckily they didn't pick me), this week the crush at Coeur d'Alene Cellars. I think I like the crush job MUCH more (than jury duty or lots of other things) LOL! This year's grapes aren't quite ready yet (almost), so I don't have to go back until Thursday and Saturday to crush this year's crop. But today was very interesting (I was the only one there besides the wine master, a little later one of the wine makers main helper came in, but the big group of helps won't be there until Thursday - you get to learn a lot when it's one on one). The day before some sample vines were clipped. I individually stripped the grapes from the vines of four different vineyards - one chardonnay, one syrah, and two different viogniers. Then I crushed the grapes by hand and hand squeezed the ones that didn't crush (not with my feet). Strained the juice into a beaker and put it into a test tube for testing. Then Warren, Brian, and I tasted the juice and smelled the aromas. It is very tasty, even before beginning fermenting. It was time to throw away the raisins, clean up my mess and move onto an even MORE exciting job. I pressure washed and cleaned 23 wine tubs. They are about 3 feet tall and 4x4 square. Did I say 23 of them! they will leave tomorrow on a semi to put up the grapes that we will start crushing on Thursday and Friday. And the most exciting thing today, I became a apprentice forklift driver. I got to move the cleaned tubs and stack them around the property. I stacked them 4 tubs high, moved them from one place to another, and didn't hit the building or run over anyone. COOL!!!!!!!
Here are all the barrels after Bob
& Warren moved them It is fun, interesting and exciting to see how labor intensive all the processes are. I will volunteer even more if they like. It would be fun to turn the barrels and test the process as the wines ferment.
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Winery - September 22, 2006Yesterday the Spokesman Review, The Coeur d' Alene Press and KHQ-TV were at Coeur d'Alene Cellars while we were doing the crush. We crushed 3.5 tons of Chardonnay grapes. Next Tuesday we will do several tons of Viognier. Today they are crushing some Merlot, but I don't have to go down because it doesn't require as many volunteers. The Syrah's will be shortly after that. Then this years crush will be barreled and wait for bottling next spring. I worked at the winery for 12 hours yesterday. I leaned another new process (for me). I got to climb up on the barrel racks and stir about 25 barrels of red wine (each barrel is stirred around 60 strokes of this special wand). I can tell you, a 62 yr old body doesn't climb up barrel racks as good as it would of 40 yrs ago. Some barrels were floor level, but it seemed almost all of the barrels needing racked were on top - that is four barrels high above the floor. We were served a large fantastic lunch, but dinner had to wait til I got home at 9:30 pm. After getting home, Kathy showed me the KHQ 6:00 news piece. It showed us working on the conveyor belt separating the bad stuff from the good stuff (which I would of gotten my hair fixed before they turned on the camera....
Crushing good time at winery (Today's Spokesman Review)Wine lovers, loyal customers a part of Coeur d'Alene Cellars 2006Taryn Brodwater Staff writer September 22, 2006 The woman with curly gray hair was on her way home from the dump when she stopped by Coeur d'Alene Cellars on a whim Thursday. Not only did she get to taste wine, she got to see it being made. Winery co-owner Sarah Gates said she's often asked by visitors if they can help stomp the grapes. While there are no bare feet involved in crushing grapes at Coeur d'Alene Cellars, the atmosphere is no less festive. "It's a harvest party," winemaker Warren Schutz said. "This is the most fun. This is where you're really making the wines." Classic rock music blared throughout the warehouse Thursday afternoon as volunteers stood around the giant steel presser, sampling the murky-looking juice of the chardonnay grapes by dipping wineglasses into a collection bin. Earlier in the day, the volunteers – wine enthusiasts and loyal customers – picked through tight clusters of chardonnay grapes plucked from the vine a day earlier in Washington's Columbia Valley. By Thursday evening they were expecting to have pressed 3 1/2 tons of grapes. The winery will crush about 60 tons this season, General Manager Kimber Gates said. "These are people who love wine and love winemaking, and they show up to listen to music and make wine," Gates said during a lull Thursday afternoon. "It adds this feeling of community." The juice was pumped into barrels Thursday, where it will ferment until May, when it's time for bottling. It will be a year from now before the 2006 chardonnay is ready for retail. Coeur d'Alene resident Steve Cantrell helped bottle last year's vintage. This season he volunteered his help crushing for the first time. "I love their wine," he said. "We liked their wine so much, we had to come down and see what it's like." Gates said wine club members, like Cantrell, "add an element that exponentially improves the quality of the wine." "They just provide the energy for what we do," she said.
Volunteer Steve Simisky prepares to open the valve to let juice pressed from chardonnay grapes enter a tank Thursday at Coeur d'Alene Cellars. (Photos by JESSE TINSLEY The Spokesman-Review ) If you go:
What: Coeur d'Alene Cellars Where: 3890 N. Schreiber Way, Coeur d'Alene Phone: (208) 664-2336 Web site: www.cdacellars.com
Sept 24, 2006 (From the last note:)I didn't realize until Saturday, and you more then likely can't see in this picture, but the one in the newspaper was much bigger and I'm standing above Steve, looking down from the top of the barrels. Steve told me on Saturday. I now have a copy of the newspaper and if you know it's me, then you can recognize it.
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Sept 26, 2006Bob found some pictures from our friend Kim's site that shows what he has been doing this week.
That big round machine is the one that crushes the grapes and I have been inside attaching parts and had to remove the drain plugs after we started crushing and got my arms, watch very sticky.
The machine that Kimber is standing by, the conveyor that we use to
separate the leaves, and other items from the grapes on there way to
the crusher or de-stemer. It is also the one that I got to clean and
learn how to run all the buttons (today).
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To view an audio/video slideshow
of the annual crushing click here: Slideshow
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Still at the Winery - October 2, 2006
We are still crushing, cleaning, cleaning and did I say cleaning. We are
in kind of a holding pattern, waiting for the Syrah grapes to finish
maturing.
Tomorrow or the next day we will continue the crush. The way things are going, we might still be crushing through next week. 60 tons of grapes total before we are all done.
Saturday the power washer broke, it is one of the most important tools
we use during crush, because it cleans EVERYTHING, barrels, floors,
equipment.
Warren (the wine master) and I looked at the burner and coils and decided it was in big trouble. He thought that there may be a place in Spokane that could fix it.
When I came in this morning (Monday), Warren told me that the place in
Spokane decided they couldn't fix it and said to ship it to Sacramento.
Well, this $5,000 machine can't be gone to Sacramento without stopping
the crush.
So ... he decided that maybe we should at least rent one so we can continue on. He found a place in Spokane who would rent them one for $360 a week. One of the other volunteers working with me today took off for Spokane to get it. In the mean time, Warren asked me, "Bob, would you like to work on it and see if you can get it working" (I was a savior Saturday because I had some tools at our house that could cut off some seized stainless steel bolts for shut off valves). I got the manual out and read some things, tried a couple of ideas and guess what, I got it working. Everyone was excited that it was working again and at that moment Steve came driving up with the rented power washer. Kimber, the owner of Coeur d' Alene Cellars, came out and gave me a BIG hug and said do you realize how much money you just saved me (around $2,500 was the estimate from Sacramento). The rented power washer goes back tomorrow.
Then Warren said, "Bob, would you like to work on the
forklift?" I greased the lift fittings, added water to
the batteries (11 gallons of distilled water - they hadn't been checked
for over a year.
After all that, Steve and I cleaned 10 more wine barrels they had just
bought from Hogue Cellars to go along with the 9 I cleaned Saturday
before the pressure washer broke. They had to be cleaned on the outside
and inside. It takes around fifteen minutes to clean each barrel.
from Kathy: Bob has been working at the winery almost every day starting at 9 AM. He usually gets home sometime between 7 PM and 10 PM. He is getting really tired but still enjoying being there. We'll see how he is two weeks from now. I'm guessing he will sleep until Christmas after Crush is over!
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October 4, 2006Today they were crushing grapes to make Opulence. I was there with my cousin Arlene and husband Denny.
Arlene, Bob, & Denny To see the pictures of Bob helping with the crush, click here: 2006 Crush pics
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October 12, 2006
Yesterday we processed 35 bins of grapes (each bin is about 1,200 pounds
of grapes). We did four different kinds of grapes for different
kinds of wines. NEW this year, they are going to make some Port
wine.
I asked Warren yesterday if we were doing more grapes then ever before and he said yes. He thinks we might end up crushing 75 tons of grapes - that's fifteen tons over last year's crush.
Last night (@ 9:30 pm - that's starting about 10 AM), we were cleaning
the sorting table and I looked up and saw we had forgotten to take the
empty bin down off the table. Earlier I had stated that I didn't
want to lift up or maybe even take down a bin from way up there.
Well, no one who could take it down was near by, so I decided, heck it's empty, so I jumped on the forklift, raised it up and gently pulled the bin out of the holder. Of course, it just happened to be one of bigger bins so I had to be even more careful. What a relief, I did it without crashing (pictures below).
Today we are going to crush another 2 tons and tomorrow another 2 tons.
I hear we may have a week break because the last grapes we are
expecting, haven't quite reached the right sugar content.
In between I have been asked to fabricate a shield to help contain the
grapes between the de-stemmer and musher. We have been using cardboard,
plastic and duct tape (pictures below).
The full bins go to the top of the sorting table. They drop onto the sorting table for us to find things we don't want to use to make wine out of.
The bin tips with grapes in it. I usually run the controls on the right
that tilt the bins, but using the forklift to remove the bin was a NEW
scary first.. FOR ME anyway!
This is the area where I'm going to build a better method of containing
the grapes dropping down from the de-stemmer.
Last night I brought home a empty wine barrel that has become a leaker.
We will cut it in half and use it as two planter boxes in the front yard
where Kathy has been working very hard taking out some juniper we didn't
care for.
For those who don't remember our previous adventures of bringing home wine barrels, let me enlighten you. Years ago, we used to go wine tasting every spring with several friends (five motorhomes full of wonderful winos). We bought two wine barrels in Yakima Valley. This was great but we found out the motorhome door is MUCH narrower then a wine barrel is wide. So ... six of us took out the passenger seat, pushed the two barrels thru the passenger door and placed them in the dining room table area. That was cool until we got home, then it was JUST Kathy and I trying to figure out how to get them back out of the motorhome. OH BY THE WAY, if you ever decide to buy a whole barrel and cut it in half to make two planter boxes - make sure you screw the metal bands to the barrel before cutting the barrel in half. Once the tension is released, the bands will drop down and NOT provide support for the barrel anymore. You will find out quite quickly that you will have 40 - 50 pieces of very nice wood laying on the ground, no longer looking like a barrel. It took me two days to figure out how to get all those wood pieces back in the shape of a barrel. So ... I'm off to the winery for another day of fun with my new friends.
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October 25, 2006 - The Final Harvest / Crush
This year's harvest/crush is finally finished. Today we processed about
4 tons of one kind of reds and 1.7 tons of another kind of red. It has
been estimated that we crushed about 80 tons of grapes this year. All
the whites are already working and about two-thirds of the reds
have been de-stemmed and will be pressed next week to be put into vats
to ferment.
The harvest is labor intensive, but that is only part of the process.
After all of the grapes are removed from the vines, they have to
maintain the correct levels of sugar/alcohol. This is time
consuming, but doesn't require as many volunteers to help out. I
think I may be down there at intervals to help maintain equipment and
build some devices that will help ease next years harvest.
Between now and bottling in June, each barrel has to be tested (BRIX)
and leveled if necessary. The wine has to be stirred so that they don't
settle down at the bottom only.
I think if they want, I will go down and help them as needed. It won't
be 10 - 12 hours a day for several days in a row, but I think I can
adjust. I feel for Warren (the wine master). He has worked 80
hours a week for the last six weeks, he is OVERDUE for a break. I
asked him today and he said maybe in February his hours will settle back
down to normal.
During this process I have met many nice people and it feels like family
and that your helping the community.
On November 5th the volunteers are being rewarded with a Harvest
Appreciation Party. It will be down at the Coeur d' Alene Cellars Wine
Bar on Sherman Ave (downtown).
If you think that menu looks fancy, it is, but so were many of the
wonderful lunches we had during the harvest.
It was a rewarding experience and it certainly helps you appreciate all
the work and effort that goes into the art of making GREAT wine.
Quality is job #1 at Coeur d' Alene Cellars.
I hope you enjoyed the adventures down at the winery. It was a wonderful
and rewarding experience.
......
I forgot to add that I continued my learning and braveness by lifting
the full bins of grapes up onto the sorting table. I had once
mentioned that I thought I would NEVER be brave enough to do that
(1200 lbs of $2,700 a ton grapes). Previously I became brave enough to
remove the empty bins, but full ones were a major step.
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