I knew I was in trouble. I was a man with graying hair and a prostate that was up to serious mischief and all I cared about at the moment, standing high up on a narrow catwalk suspended across an open-top fermenter that held 8,000 pounds of roiling juice was summoning the strength to press down on the solid cap of skins and fruit pulp that formed a tight, cement-hard seal above the juice, more than a foot thick.
In the pouring rain, at night, I was punching down, or trying to
submerge the cap with an instrument that resembles a large, heavy steel
toilet plunger with a large disc at the business end. You grip the
tool's dowel handles and grunt and push. You're trying to break apart
the cap and sink it long enough for the skin tannins and color
components to mingle with the juice and enrich it before the released
carbon dioxide sends these solids floating up to the top again. They do
re-form, and for about a week, and twice a day at least, if you're
slightly nuts, you climb onto the catwalk to punch down the cap again
by hand. There are automated ways of submerging it but for some of us,
the crazies, hand-punching is the only option. It's gentler and kinder
to the grape skins we believe, resulting in softer wines.
They say 65 is the new 45. I assure you that when you're punching down on a slippery catwalk and the suction action of the juice just about wrenches your shoulders out of their sockets as you yank up on your tool, it feels more like the new 120.
But hey, death and dismemberment are a small price to pay for making Pinot Noir. This lady sings to your soul as she quenches your thirst. She's dangerous, she's capricious, and she frankly doesn't give a She doesn' give a damn how many tendons you blow out on her behalf. She doesn't care if she cripples you or bankrupts you. Why should she?
I knew all that going in, but from a safe distance. Now. about eighteen months or so later, I've punched down, mucked out tanks, dragged hoses, gassed barrels, dumped buckets of dry ice, forklifted, destemmed, and gone to bed with grape skins and seeds embedded in my ears and up my nose.
All that to produce my first miniscule release, 46 cases of Russian River West Sonoma unfined and unfiltered Pinot Noir. I followed a curious path to get here, but so did most of the loony garagistes tucked away in the hills of West Sonoma and Santa Lucia, further south. We're a loose confederation, to be sure, mostly unknown to one another but bound by a common, irrational passion for Pinot-a manic in pursuit of her secrets and sure to return for more punishment each time she spits in our eye.
From time to time I'll post an entry about the unlikely series of events that got me into this, and the successes and set-backs and such as I now venture out, eighteen months later to pour my first samples for sommeliers, friends, Pinot lovers and, um, wine writers like myself—while preparing for my next vintage. If you've got a moment, please share your adventures in any of these areas, too.
This much I've already learned: Watching a wine director taste my wine is like watching my son ride off alone on his bike for the first time when he was six. I'm terrified and thrilled. I've done my job. At the moment, this crucial moment, I no longer matter.
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