Coming from the Midwest I am well experienced with a shovel, but that is from shoveling inches and inches of snow (especially last winter). Well Saturday I got my first experience shoveling out a wine tank that had been full with 5 tons of fresh grapes and now was a fermented mass of solid skins. Upon opening the man way door (no tidal wave - we are learning well!) I was greeted by solid skins - all told probably about 3 feet deep. So with a rake and shovel I began to remove them into a press basket and 35 minutes later the tank was empty and ready for a new batch of grapes on Monday - our last batch you may remember.
Also on Saturday we barreled down 2 tanks worth of wine into 28 barrels (for the wine aficionados the barrels were a mix, all french oak, from 2010, 09, 08, & a couple of 07's). Plus of course we had punch downs - more muscle building! What was supposed to be an easy 8 hour day turned into another hectic 11 hours of work on what was a fairly warm, for October day 85 degrees. Well the good news is that I have Sunday off!
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