The picking of grapes is undoubtedly a stressful and important part of the wine making process. It’s like looking at what you’ve got to work with for the whole next year. A season full of challenges, like this one — with a fruit fly that’s made the jump from cherries to grapes with devastating effect across Switzerland and a poor quality yield due to the weather — is tiring for those involved right from the start. From the moment the truck backs in at 7pm with its lights blaring and Mario the chipper Portuguese vineyard leading-hand at the helm of the crane, Chris will have an idea of where the wine will go. Can it be exceptional? Can these grapes produce great wine or will it be a push all the way? Excellent harvest makes the winemakers job easier — less checks, less problems, less cotton glove treatment to nurse the grapes to something refined and tasty. This, it seems, is not one of those seasons.
There’s something about the sleep you get after a long day of hard, physical work. I’m sure it’s something to do with your body saying enough is enough. It’s the sort of sleep I remember enjoying as a small boy when I’d spend the evenings belting around the park or the enormous garden next door with my friends. Otherwise I was often exhausted after having a fight with my older brother, but that is more about his ability to produce loud rage from me as I inevitably bawled at the unfairness of being sent to my room. Needless to say, I haven’t been doing any of those things this past fortnight, but I have certainly been sleeping the sleep reserved for those completely exhausted.
This vintage caper in Switzerland has given me a few refresher lessons about hard work and effort. It’s the sort of effort where I feel like I’m treading finely the line between character-building exertion and damage-to-my-person fatigue. I’m at that stage where you think that the old adage of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is actually just bullshit because some things do actually make you weaker. Thankfully, so far it’s been an experience of fast-paced learning and labour. I knew I would have to work hard — and I’m glad for it.
Usually it seems grapes are picked according to their ripeness and readiness for the press. It makes sense. Picking the grapes when they’re going to produce the best wine seems like a pretty good start. My exhaustion has been exaggerated by the fact that four or five weeks worth of grape picking has been crammed into two, which means that the cellar receives a lot more fruit, more quickly than it should. I’ve been assured that vintage is always a busy and testing time but that the concertina of this year’s difficulties is ‘extreme’. I have to say it is starting to feel a little bit like a game of rugby I played for Burnie against Easts in July where we didn’t get possession of the ball for most of the 80 mins and lost 115 to nil.
That being said, I’m noticing smells and scents that I was sure my operation-scarred nose would never pick up. My ‘bionic beak’ as my father poetically coined it has been having a field day. Early on in my first week the Sauvignon Blanc grapes arrived from the Sternen vineyards. One portion of the grapes received X5 yeast — known for producing floral, interesting aromas such as pineapple, guava and lychee. While the other tank got Freddo — a hardier yeast, which is less trouble to maintain but doesn’t quite reach the aromatic heights of its more unpredictable counterpart. The differences were astonishing. I kept on sniffing it and sniffing it some more. It was an exciting sort of watershed moment. The realisation that I was going to follow the grapes from the harvest to the tank through the transformation that occurs across the ferment.
Alex McKenzie is a Tasmanian food writer, and has a blog, Food, fullstop. He will be in Switzerland at the Weingut zum Sternen vineyard — where they have been producing wine for 552 years, and is currently run by the three Meier brothers — following the winemaking process for an entire vintage.Island will be featuring Alex’s discoveries, musings, and revelations about his experience throughout his stay.
Read more from Alex about Weingut zum Sternen.