Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: I do not like
winter. Never have, never will.
I grew up in a place that was proud of the fact that for at
least three months of the year a human cannot continue to exist
outdoors without serious military-grade arctic survival gear.
Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: I do not like winter. Never have, never will.
I grew up in a place that was proud of the fact that for at least three months of the year a human cannot continue to exist outdoors without serious military-grade arctic survival gear. “Water-Winter Wonderland” was the motto that Michigan proudly stamped on license plates when I was a child.
Wisely, they now simply say “Great Lakes,” I suppose in an effort to scare away fewer people.
Today, I cringe at the sight of snow: the closest I want to get to slush is a frozen margarita – and that preferably served to me while on a white sand beach somewhere close to the equator.
Recently, while driving through the country on a gray, rainy day, I passed a winery. The vines were bare, no more than sticks really, and the winery buildings looked sort of forlorn and abandoned.
The crushing equipment was covered to protect it from the elements, eagerly awaiting the frenetic harvest when the machinery will next be pressed into service. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot going on, but there were muddy vehicles in the parking lot, evidence that someone was working.
To find out what is going on in a typical winery at this time of year, I called on Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill. The day I visited it was pouring rain.
I expected to find a skeleton crew on hand, perhaps someone in the tasting room, dusting the inventory and optimistically awaiting a visitor or two. Instead, the winery was a very busy place, with visitors in the office awaiting appointments with staff members and workers coming and going from the barrel rooms.
Third-generation winemaker George Guglielmo took a few minutes of his day to share with me what goes on in a winery this time of year.
He was constantly interrupted by workers needing decisions about this and that. It seemed like my impression of a winter-time winery as a sleepy, abandoned place was totally off the mark.
George told me that in the vineyards, pruning of the plants takes place from mid-December until mid-February. The vines will begin to come to life – a time called “bud-break” – around the end of March or the beginning of April. Steps are taken now to prevent powdery mildew from forming, and grasses and weeds must be kept from taking over the vineyards.
These unwanted plants are not removed solely for aesthetic reasons: when you are growing valuable crops such as wine grapes, you want to reserve all the nutrients in the soil to nourish the grape vines.
In the winery itself, several operations are in process. Some wines are being “racked,” a process in which sediment is removed. As wine rests in barrels, sediment collects at the bottom.
The clear wine on top is pumped into holding tanks, the barrels are cleaned and the wine is returned to them to rest again. This is done at least twice a year before a wine is bottled. This process also gives the winemaker an opportunity to check on the progress of the various vintages, and it is also the time when the substances used to preserve the wine are added.
One operation that goes on all year at Guglielmo is bottling. At the time of my visit, workers were bottling Guglielmo’s 2004 White Zinfandel, a wine that needs to be corked up while young, in order to preserve its fruity qualities. George was also bottling his ’04 Pinot Grigio, another varietal that benefits from early bottling.
His crew had recently finished with the 2003 Zinfandel, a wine that won’t be released for several more months. Once a wine – especially a red wine – is put into a bottle, it needs time to recover from the physical trauma of being bottled (sort of a reverse childbirth) before it regains its qualities of flavor, aroma and appearance.
And the tasting room? It was bustling, as several customers braved the downpour to sample the respected wines crafted by George and his staff.
Although the Guglielmo operation was a fairly busy place during my visit, it will really be humming today (Saturday, Feb. 19) when the winery presents its seventh Cork Equity Day.
Now held quarterly, this popular event features a wine blended specially for the day. Customers get to fill their own bottles – if you don’t bring your own, they are available for purchase – and in exchange the wine is offered at an extremely reasonable price. Guglielmo makes Cork Equity Days a lot of fun, with live Italian music and complimentary grilled Italian sausages. The winery went through 12 barrels of wine for the last event, and expects to exceed that today. This time, the blend is 85 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 15 percent Petite Syrah.
George was also proud of the fact that this year he is making a Grignolino Rosé – the first time Guglielmo has produced that style since the 1950s. The Morgan Hill winery is among only three in the state that grow grignolino, a grape that produces a lightly fruity red wine, and they have been making a respectable version of it for many years. The rosé should be released sometime in March.
So my initial impression was incorrect. Winter is a time of high activity in a winery operation, at least in California. But I’d be willing to bet that there isn’t much going on in the vineyards of the “Water-Winter Wonderland.” They’re probably buried to their noses in snow.
