Yesterday, Brian called me from work to ask if I would be free Saturday morning. Fall quarter just ended so I told him I would have the day off. He asked me out on a secret/surprise morning date and I couldn't resist another trademark Brian surprise. My only concern was that he asked me to wear clothes I wouldn't mind getting dirty. This slightly worried me.
I usually don't mind dirt at all - I love yard work and sports and outdoor activities. My only concern was that we have entered our rainy season here in NorCal. I wasn't looking forward to being freezing cold and muddy. With my temperature-sensitive anemic body, I'm more prone to getting sick when I've been exposed to cold for too long.
This morning he woke me up at 8 a.m. and his tone had changed - instead, he asked me to wear clothes I wouldn't mind getting "stained." He also told me that he was putting me to work, and I pouted. I guessed that we would probably be painting someone's house as a favor or something of that nature, which would be fine if it were not for the rain.
We drove to his work at Coast Guard Island in Alameda and I got confused all over again. Was he going to ask me to paint a Coat Guard boat with him? Instead of taking a right onto the base, he took a left and we entered an unfamiliar street. It wasn't until I saw a sign for Irish Monkey Cellars that I realized what was going on.
"If you don't mind sweetheart, we're going to bottle wine," he said grinning.
Irish Monkey Cellars is a small urban winery in the East Bay of Northern California, where most of the staff is volunteer and the motto "Will Work For Wine" is taken literally. Brian is friends with the cellar master at IMC, who was a Coast Guard Academy graduate with his father.
I was so excited! I've never done anything involving the production of wine and the process is still a bit of a mystery to me aside from the tours I've taken at large production wineries like Mondavi and Sterling in Napa. I've seen the automation process from vine to fermentation, but never done by hand.
Brian spent the day corking bottles by hand with some sort of lever device that got him sweaty and covered his shoes in wine. I spent the day leisurely injecting empty bottles with a gas that pushed all of the oxygen out of the bottles before they were filled with wine. I had to lift cases of empty bottles every few minutes, but otherwise I didn't break a sweat. I really enjoyed being part of a production line of work, and all of the other workers were incredibly sweet.
After bottling several pallets of tempranillo and sangiovese, then cleaning down all of the bottling machinery with sulfite and water, we kicked back and enjoyed the extra wine while snacking on an extensive breakfast spread of smoked salmon, brie, boursin, fruit and amazing bread. I had an excellent time and can't wait until we go back for the next bottling day!
5 comments:
soooooooo amazing! Bravo, B! What a great date!
That sounds awesome! How was the wine?
Sounds like a great time!
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