Edited to add this link to Venjobs at UC Davis. The site has over 50 openings for harvest, cellar and lab internships for the 2010 harvest.
Including … a spot at Kosta Browne! Any takers???
I am compiling a list 0f 50 tips, but I got stuck at #28. Got any suggestions to add to the list?
\
- If you don’t work cellar all year, work out with weights and jog for three months before harvest.
- Your job description is ‘whatever it takes’ and your hours are ‘until it is done and clean.’ It is never ‘someone else’s job’ no matter how menial the task. If you enjoy winemaking, then you enjoy every gritty moment.
- Don’t just accept a morning assignment and totter off to do it half-asleep. Make sure you are alert and fully involved in the morning wine movement review. You should always know what the rest of the staff is doing or about to do. There can be major task shifts when equipment breaks down, an employee is injured or absent, or the assistant winemaker’s wife is having a baby. If you are suddenly shifted to another job with little notice or instruction, you’ll need to have an accurate and current mental map of the wine movement and tasks.
- Don’t let tedium or exhaustion make you brain dead. Stop at every stage in your work and review your movements. Ask yourself, “did I open valve A? And did I open valve B? Is the pump turned on in the right direction?” Walk through and review your preparation for each task before turning equipment on.
- Unless you are expecting calls from growers or technicians, leave your cellphone in your vehicle. Not only is it liable to get crushed or soaked if left on the crushpad or in your pocket, there is absolutely no need to field calls from your dates and friends all day when you should be attending to winemaking tasks.
- Instead of lifting a hose over your head to drain it, just make a loop in the hose and roll it away from you.
- Use a new or thorougly cleaned 50-gallon rubber trash can filled with water and sanitizing solution to soak and clean tall implements like scoops, brooms, wands and punchdown tools. Tape a sign on the can so others don’t throw their lunch trash in it.
- When washing staged barrels, instead of walking back and forth between the barrel and the hose valves, install valves on the equipment end of the hose to eliminate trips.
- There’s no point in having a clean and sanitized crush pad and cellar if you don’t take out the garbage every day. Those pizza boxes and empty beer bottles are just as attractive to bees and flies as the grapes. Use trash can liners so you don’t end up washing the cans every day.
- Telling a winemaker how another winemaker does things is like telling your martial arts instructor you know a better way to kick his ass.
- Name-dropping and bragging about previous harvests at other wineries is a dead giveaway that you don’t know what you’re doing—you’ll be relegated to the grunt tasks like punchdowns and bin washing for the duration of harvest.
- Creative profanity is a playful art—not to be over-used, or used in front of customers, growers, or the winemaker’s wife and children.
- If you have forklift privileges, always park it somewhere dry when not in use (not near the power-washing stations) and always, always lower the forks immediately after using them in a raised position. Do NOT drive around or park with raised forks. Once again. Forks. Down.
- Always turn off the lift when dismounting. Roll aways are very dangerous, and can result in injury as well as damage.
- Never assume that the people around you are aware of the forklift. Don’t run over the dogs.
- Do not use the forklift as a diving board, stepladder or bumper car. The forklift will not beep before you back over a dog, so always look behind you.
- Everything has its place. Tools, bin straps, fittings and gaskets … clean them and put them away. Continually scour your work area for abandoned items and rescue them. The winemaker is not your mommy. Continually misplacing or abandoning expensive tools and fittings is considered infantile and irresponsible. Tools and fittings are expensive and deserve the same care that the larger equipment enjoys. And if you put everything where it belongs, you won’t have to search for it later!
- During harvest, dedicate a door shelf in the cellar refrigerator to vitamins and nutrients. Vitamin B is water-soluble and leached from the body by coffee and alcohol. It provides a steady source of energy and assists in the assimilation of other nutrients. Vitamin C also assists in nutrient absorption and staves off colds and stress-related illness. Royal bee jelly provides a high-octane source of natural energy. Liquid chlorophyll aids in quick toxin cleansing. Activated charcoal provides amazingly fast relief for those burrito bloated pains and hangover runs.
- Assemble your own first aid kit in a bright red or yellow flight bag and keep it in your vehicle. Stock it with hydrogen peroxide, fluid bandaid, large sport bandaids, gauze pads and duct tape (works better than first aid tape in wet conditions). Disposable latex gloves to protect bandaged hands, eye wash, antibacterial ointment and tweezers (for removing splinters). Washable Ace bandages for sprains. Write your name on the kit because it will get ‘borrowed’ frequently.
- Women are not impressed by black, rough, cracked hands. Unless you say you make wine. And that lasts for about one date.
- Wear disposable latex gloves when working with tannic musts and cleaning solutions. Mechanics wear them to protect their hands, so it’s not a girly-girl thing.
- If your hands are cracked and stained from tannins, try this at home: slather a good-quality yogurt like Mountain High on your hands and wait for 5 minutes, then rinse. Rub a cold-pressed peanut oil or almond oil into your hands. The enzymes in the yogurt leach the tannins out of your skin, and the oil helps heal chapped skin and cracks.
- Always keep a duffle bag in your vehicle with a full change of dry work clothes, socks, hat, sunscreen, and dry shoes. If your cellar boasts a shower, you can add flip flops, a bar-hopping shirt, and toiletries.
- Buy good work boots.
- Always check your pockets before you go home. If you’re asleep in bed with the forklift key or the bolts to the crusher pan in your shorts, the morning crew is going to be significantly unhappy.
- Never disrespect the tasting room or office staff. If they think you are charming, you will have allies. If you can pull off ‘adorably helpless’ you may score all kinds of goodies.
- If you speak fluent Spanish, feel free to talk smack to your Spanish-speaking cohorts. If you don’t speak Spanish, remember that a) your co-workers know far more about winemaking than they let on and b) they are bilingual, and you’re not.
- If you think you have nothing to do, you’re wrong. Find something to clean. And then clean it.