A Glamour Day in the Wine Business

I originally posted this on the Wine Spectator site, but I liked it so much, I'm reposting here.

Monday turned into a long day. Visited the new vineyard site from 8-10am. Whacked one gopher. You know what winegrowers talk about when they get together? Killing gophers. We all keep a count, it's like kill marks on a fighter plane. "How many did you get?." "I got 14 so far this year." "That's good, I've only got 7."

Everyone keeps an up to date count, plus a vintage history. "I got 11 this year, but nothing like 05 I got 104 that year." I heard someone actually say that on Saturday. I know winegrowers who can't remember exactly what the weather was like 5 years ago, but they can remember how many gophers they killed. Monday was my first kill of the vintage. Millie's comment. "11 more and your even with me."

Glamour of the wine life.

I meet with our Bay Area sales reps for lunch and did barrel samples for them. Good kids. They seem so young.

The crew had a spat and I had to go back on site after lunch. Daniel was filling the post holes with too much water and Millie was mad about working in mud. Turned out it was a Spanish translation problem. Last week I had a simliar problem. I backed the forklift around the truck to unload it, and Jerry had said he'd turn the truck around. My Spanish isn't good enough to tell the difference between "go around the truck" and "turn around the truck".

Monday the problem was Daniel's English wasn't good enough to tell the difference between 'put water in the holes' and 'fill the holes with water'. Everyone made up though and they have 5 of the 34 rows complete.

Total wine stuff 10 hours.
Total miles:104.
Rows installed :5
Sales Reps met: 3
Dead Gophers: 1