GARAGE VINO

Yes — this is the secret I’ve now discovered behind the making of great wine.

And if you think I’m merely fabricating a semi-compelling line as the title of my latest entry, think again: there’s a certain wisdom to keeping the components of winemaking — all of them — sanitary; while there are always elements you can’t control, you want to control what you can, and when you do, the wine you make is less subject to alien influence…and almost invariably better. Visit the winery behind any excellent wine, and what will you generally discover? Clean, sanitary practices, top to bottom.

And if you’re doing what you love, you’re just going to be better at it than if you’re not…so why not listen to some good music while you’re having a blast?

These are only some of the secrets I’ve learned in my two weeks as the harvest intern at Jaffurs Wine Cellars. Obviously I can’t reveal any of the real secrets…

…but I can, of course, offer some of my impressions. The main one being this: two hours on the job during harvest in a 5,000-case-a-year winery is easily worth two years at UC Davis. All due respect to the enjoyable distance-learning classes I’ve taken at that esteemed institution.

The Gig

Wednesday, October 10, 9:00 am arrival. I get dropped off at the winery, a large city lot near Milpas on Montecito Street in Santa Barbara, bedecked with a tall, hacienda-style building, a walled crushpad at the head of the driveway, and a small deck and ground-level tasting room. A friendly, unassuming sign — Jaffurs Wine Cellars — greets you as you stroll into what is clearly a working winery, with people like me scrubbing bins, hosing off the concrete pad, or sometimes, if you arrive at the right time, sorting grapes and plucking excess stems from below the destemmer.

Craig Jaffurs, Dave Yates, and Matt Brady could not have been more welcoming, friendly, unassumable. Craig is the winemaker in his own winery and determined to keep every detail, every facet of the process, under control, down to the neatness in the way the bins are lined up inside the building. You learn quick that there’s a reason for this, and the reason is covered above: you might get lucky making wine with dirty disorganization, but it won’t be true every year. And Craig’s wine rates in the 90s year in, year out. The fact that he let a random entrant like me into his fine-wine kingdom merely, I suspect, reflected a slight weakness in his highly organized armor: Craig, too, began his winemaking career as a harvest intern.

Dave has taken Craig’s great wine and helped market it internationally, from the tasting room on Montecito Street to shipments to Japan and elsewhere. He also makes one fine wine himself, called Cane Felice, an easy-drinking but delightfully complex Sangiovese, the label and story on the back of the bottle making it the perfect vino for dog-lovers (Cane Felice translates as “Happy Dog” and Dave’s dog Cava is artistically depicted on the bottle’s label).

Matt was a global studies major (like me) at UCSB (unfortunately for me, unlike me) whose interest in wine and winemaking led to an unanticipated path into the driveway of Jaffurs Wine Cellars. He ran across an opportunity not unlike mine, and Matt, being the brilliant guy he is, seized it like a bulldog. He works tirelessly, helping Craig make the fine wine he makes, running the facility like a finely tuned machine…and I’m sure the wine he makes himself will soon win awards as well.

The Work

Main Job of Harvest Slave: I started out sterilizing bins that would soon be used to plonk the stemmed grapes into (Jaffurs doesn’t crush his grapes from the outset, merely destems ‘em). Hose off, sterilize with a brush, hose off, sterilize with another brush, hose off. Cover with plastic, line up along the wall. Same duties on a number of tools, and the hopper that funnels grapes into the destemmer.

While I’m midway through the bins, the first grapes of the day arrive. The truck pulls in front of the winery, Craig boards the forklift, and the 6 tons of fruit makes its way onto the crush pad. We get two deliveries of this sort, both Syrah and Grenache, all from Santa Barbara county.

Main Job of Harvest Slave #2: plucking spare stems from the bins as the destemmer spits out the berries (and a few stems it missed along the way). This technique may be unique to Jaffurs, but for the varietals they don’t want to ferment in whole clusters, they want the fewest possible stems, leaves, and anything else other than grapes. So you dunk your head into these half-ton, and sometimes 2-ton bins, and you pluck stems with both hands until your wrists are cramping and your head and shoulders are drenched with mushed grape skins (because half the time you’re directly underneath the destemmer’s grape output). On the long destemming runs Syrah juice starts to drip into your mouth — it’s delicious — but it also tags you in the eye once in a while, which isn’t so delicious. You rapidly learn to bring a baseball cap or bandana; this way, after each half-ton bin-dump, you need only hose off your arms, hat, and the back of your neck. Otherwise (as on my first day) you’re plucking grape stuff out of your hair and ears for a week.

Main Job of Harvest Slave #3: Hosing off the bins, hopper, and crush pad, sterilizing, hosing off, wiping down, organizing, hosing off, shoveling, raking, squeegeeing…and hosing off. Thankfully Matt, the King of the Destemmer, insists on cleaning the massive thing off himself. He knows its ins and outs like no other, and thus prevents himself the misery of a bad cleaning job by some rookie like me gumming up the works the next day or polluting the great fruit he’s responsible for destemming and fermenting properly.

Occasional Bonus Job of Harvest Slave: punching down destemmed berry bins as such things as yeast nutrients and diammonium phosphate (check my spelling but it’s known as DAP) are added and need to be mixed in.

Occasional Bonus Job of Harvest Slave #2:pushing bins into cold soak position in the fridge, covering and arranging bins that Craig feeds and/or inoculates. Using little tricks like rags soaked in vodka that kill all unwanted stuff on the inside top sides of the bins, spritzing the top of the bins with SO2 solution (many top winemakers do not sulfite for the crush or cold soak these days), cutting the right size plastic coverings and figuring out how to secure them.

Occasional Bonus Job/Furlough Release of Harvest Slave #3: a generous invite from Dave to drive out to the vineyards Jaffurs buys from and sample and test the grapes. We saw Roussanne, I grape I hadn’t known much about before. We visited the winemakers association in Santa Ynez. We plucked grapes and stored them for Brix and ph testing later in the day. So many winemakers buy grapes from vineyards managed by professional management companies that they now have as much control over the crop as if they owned the lands themselves…with no vineyard mortgage to concern themselves with, of course. Part of my whole business plan to begin with…at least to begin with. Since I do love those vineyards and the ranches they’re planted on.

Occasional Bonus of Harvest Slave #4: visits from my wife and father at the winery, visits from tasting-room guests who ask me, the harvest slave, questions I soon am able to answer fluently…and one last thing…I headed out to Jaffurs on a Wednesday morning holding an empty bottle of 2005 Santa Barbara County Syrah, which I had bought at the Lazy Acres store and consumed to be informed…and I returned with a full bottle, a gift for my labors — of the same wine.

It, too, was soon empty.

The Whole Thing About It

It almost sounds odd to pound it out through my fingers to the keyboard, let alone verbalize it, but working this funny combination of manual labor and specific-skilled duties adds up to one of the most enjoyable times I’ve ever had working for anyone else. Maybe it’s because I’m in a kind of self-soothing honeymoon period in that I see all this as research for my own winery ambitions — but I don’t think that explains the half of it.

The fact is, you know you like doing something when you’ll do it for nuthin’ or do it late into the night. I wrote for nuthin’, and I wrote late into the night, for two decades before anyone paid me a red cent for doing it. And besides the pain of the placing-your-ass-in-the-seat-for-hours-on-end process, I loved every minute of it. I escaped the drudgery of doing what I didn’t like in order to pay the bills by journeying to that place that fueled me, despite not yet rewarding me physically. It emerged as my means of making a living in addition to my source of a recharging kind of energy…

…and working the three or so days a week as the Jaffurs Wine Cellars low-man-on-the-totem-pole has been, two-plus weeks in now, in a word — energizing. It’s exciting, it’s vigorous. Every component of the work, regardless of its apparent menial nature, serves a specific and important purpose in the winemaking process. You’re blasting things with hoses, you’re burying your head in a stream of crushed grapes, you’re learning how a fine winemaker makes his wine fine — money or no money, toiling all day or only an hour or two at it, it’s maybe the second or third pursuit I’ve enjoyed every minute of in my life to date. An odd discovery, wouldn’t you say, in that it took forty-one years to find?

Even odder still that I’ve made this discovery only by virtue of not completing the permitting process on time in this new field I’m venturing into. Where, if I would have launched with a custom-crush operation this month, I would have paid mucho dinero to learn, through mistakes, what a few weeks as a willing and attentive harvest intern learns in a matter of minutes and for nuthin’.

Anyway, I’m learning so much, so fast, and confirming the passion I only sensed before for making wine, growing grapes, and earning a living in this field in general, that I’m striving to contribute as well as or better than any of the other help around me. This whole thing is an opportunity I’m lucky to have and I’m determined to give back through my efforts.

IN THE NEXT BLOG: A PIECE OF ADVICE FROM CRAIG LEADS TO…

…the purchase and picking of a quarter-ton of Paso Robles Zinfandel grapes, which then leads to my simultaneous adventure of actually making wine in the garage. Kind of a propos, n’est pas, considering the name of this blog, adventure, and winery?

Yep, that’s right, I’ve got harvest, testing, crush, cold-soak, and early-fermentation notes to relay the next time I sit down to bust out another chapter in the GARAGE VINO quest.

That’s right — I actually bought some California grapes and I’m making some wine. Tune in next time — same bat time, same bat channel. (I’ll talk to you in a year or two to tell you whether the first noncommercial GV vintage is any good!)

Finally, if I can figure out how to post a picture within the architecture of a blog entry, I’ve got shots of my first two weeks with the Jaffurs camp that I’ll post between this and the next written entry as well.

So I set out with maybe 21 days to spare to obtain a federal wine & beer wholesaler’s permit from TTB, a state license from California’s ABC unit requiring some nine forms, and various other county and local approvals. I say there were 21 days to spare because most white wine grapes had already been harvested, and the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county Syrahs — the varietal where I wanted to begin my winemaking quest — were looking ready to pluck in three week’s time (from the launch of garage vino, I mean).

The feds are amazingly easy to deal with, and extraordinarily helpful. I got my hands on the relevant forms by contacting the TTB (acronym for the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury), where phone numbers, email addresses, and all relevant forms and instructions are readily available on their website. People call you back from their offices in Ohio within a day, email you answers to questions even faster, and for something as seemingly basic as the wholesaler’s basic permit, the process can be as simple as filling out a single form. Still, the application process can take 90 days or more.

State laws are more complex and unique, and California is no exception. Add in the county issues — particularly if you don’t own agriculture-zoned property, suitable, from a permitting perspective, for processing of grapes — and it makes one realize, if one hopes to acquire grapes for professional winemaking purposes, that one probably ain’t gonna get it done in three weeks or less.

But I read that a number of the tax-bonding and other paperwork issues are housed or handled by custom-crush winery facilities. Thinking that I might skirt some of the permitting delays by contracting with the right place, I do some research (something we spy novelists are supposed to be good at). I’m getting excited when I encounter an article on Terravant, a custom-crush winery catering to small-lot wineries and producers, located only forty minutes from my home — here’s the article — but discover it isn’t opening until next spring at the earliest. Mention is made in the article of the bigger custom-crush processing facilities in the Central Coast area — Central Coast Wine Services and Paso Robles Wine Services, both owned by the same folks — and so I hunt around for a while and find out a little about these joints.

Meanwhile I’m combing through listings of uncontracted grapes for a ton or two of Syrah, and learning there isn’t much Syrah out there. Merlot, yes (thanks, Sideways); Cabernet Sauvignon, yes. Thank God I’m not in the market for Pinot Noir at the moment.

I’m getting the sense my lofty ambitions of acquiring grapes, entering into a custom-crush contract to make my wine, and obtaining all necessary permits in time for the 2007 harvest were foolish, naive, maybe risky, even impossible.

But I find the name of the president of the Central Coast Wine Services group and discover he lives where I do. In my experience it’s a harder phone call to place, but once you make the call you inevitably find you’re better served by starting at the top, so that’s what I do. Nicholas Miller was my first industry victim. (Actually, that’s not true — my very first industry victim was the famous screenwriter behind the Karate Kid, Transporter, and other high-profile films, Robert Kamen, rapidly turning himself into a famous winemaker through his impeccable Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon…check him and his wines out or join his exclusive wine club at Kamen Estate Wines. I called Robert for some advice a few months ago and he told me the vineyard and winery businesses were just like drugs — just say no — along with a few other very important chunks of advice and incredible resources for which I will always be in his debt. More on Kamen later.)

As always seems to be the case in industries where people are enjoying themselves, Miller called me back right away. And not only did he offer his company’s services, he must have sensed some of that foolishness and naivete — from his first message on my cell phone, he began suggesting I consider working with a local winery in Santa Barbara to learn the ropes, an introduction he’d be happy to make for me if I so desired. Both his custom-crush facilities, after all, required a 2-ton or more minimum, and, he mentioned, any wine you intend to sell professionally, you’ll need to get it bonded for tax purposes from the outset or you can forget about ever selling it.

Being of lofty ambitions there in my second week of operations, I said thanks for the idea but let’s get rocking on a 2-ton order and jump on a conference call with your winemaker! Believe it or not, Nicholas, all the while almost certainly knowing this would never come to be — not in 2007, anyway — was kind enough to entertain the notion and get the wheels turning for me at his company. His next-smallest client probably with fifty or a hundred times more grapes than I was considering buying (that’s right, I hadn’t even found those grapes yet). Anyway, long story short, he was even more patient with me, and generous with his time, enough so to hold a philosophical conversation or two about those lofty ambitions of mine.

In the end, thanks to Nicholas, I realized my ambitions would have to wait for next year’s harvest — when I might actually have permits in place, I might understand which microclimates in the area would be the best places from which to source my grapes, and I might have some vague idea how great wine is made from good grapes. I hoped he would still remember that initial suggestion of his, and I invited myself to take him up on it if it still stood. He said it did, and he made a call that day to a celebrated local winemaker and winery owner here in Santa Barbara on my behalf. I can only imagine how the call went — Hi, it’s me. There’s some quack author who saw that freaking movie, like everyone else did, and he’d like to come work on your harvest with you. Need some help? Can’t vouch for him, other than the fact that he sounds foolish and naive to me over the phone. I did Google him, and he got some good reviews on his first two books . . . nothing to do with the wine industry, though.

Anyway, as I mentioned, from my experience you know you’re getting into a great industry if the people you reach out to for help in the world of that industry are helpful, generous with their time, and seemingly having a great time doing what they’re doing. (Qualities hard to find in the publishing industry, believe me.) I offer my sincere thanks to Nicholas Miller and recommend you use his processing facilities and expert winemakers and compliance staff for your winemaking needs — provided you’ve got more than a thimbleful of wine, and a permit or two making you a legally recognized wineselling entity, of course.

Here’s an interview with Nicholas . . .

But I’ve saved the best for last. At least the best opportunity — for a foolish, naive, highly ambitious lad such as me, that is.

Or the scariest . . . depending on how you look at it.

You see, Nicholas Miller introduced me to Craig Jaffurs. Craig and I spoke today. Craig, too, is one of the nicest people I’ve encountered in recent times. He’s also an acclaimed winemaker, with ratings from his first vintage onward planted firmly in the mid-90s. Almost unheard of. He makes exclusively Rhone varietals — pretty much my favorites. Plus, he recently relocated all his winemaking to a state-of-the-art facility he built from the ground up near his home in Santa Barbara. He’s a big proponent of the vineyard-as-appellation philosophy . . . he can make one hell of a Syrah . . .

And guess who’s going to be working as the newest grunt at Jaffurs Wine Cellars, starting tomorrow at nine a.m.?

That’s right — he of the lofty, “garage vino” ambitions will be hosing off floors and carrying bins with the best of ‘em tomorrow.

Craig’s wines can be found in great stores and restaurants all over the country, in his tasting room in downtown Santa Barbara, and on the Jaffurs Wine Cellars website.

An interesting interview with the winemaker-owner himself can be found here…

And I will let you know how things look from the ground up as my lofty ambitions get crunched down to reality and I do a little looking before I leap — while seeing if I can repay the favor of the access to excellence these good people have provided me by paying some dues and helping them out in the process.