Wednesday, March 7, 2012

W(h)ining.

Not everything is learning about wine, frolicking in the vineyards, and drinking lots of wine.

Sometimes it's about impressing guests. Sometimes it's about cleaning the winery. Sometimes it's about putting your headphones on and getting down to some hard core power-washing the floors. Sometimes it's about really enjoying the power-hose and seeing the different colored floor being revealed underneath the layer of wine-stains. Sometimes it's about helping with the cooking. Sometimes it's about volunteering to do the dishes. Sometimes it's about eating two carb-hearty meals a day before 1pm and eating it all because you're hungry and it's in front of you, and then being invited to dinner and saying yes and eating more because it's free and homemade. Sometimes it's about pretending to look busy and refilling your water bottle because you're not sure what else to do. Sometimes it's about cleaning out the stainless steel tanks. Sometimes it's about having work nightmares but those nightmares include spiders, not presentations or conference calls. Sometimes it's about taking the leftover and/or half-opened bottles of wines because no one else wants them and enjoying them yourself. Sometimes it's about walking into a room or your house and looking up at the ceiling and along the walls, almost always unwillingly, to see what creature might be lurking above. Sometimes it's about sneaking in some iChats early in the morning as it's the best time to converse with a 13 hour time difference. Sometimes it's about being a stereotype. Sometimes its about going to bed at 9pm and sometimes it's about having to be at work at 1:30am. Sometimes it's about being a girl squealing at squashed birds, gagging at drowned mouse, and convulsing at ginormous spiders as they pass by on the grape-press conveyor belt with the guys making fun of you. Sometimes it's about labeling wine bottles with the appropriate and necessary export stickers. Sometimes it's about taking the 5 hours of WWOOF work requirement and then sitting on the internet to catch up on "real-life" while the work outside in the winery continues. And sometimes it's ok to be alright with that. Sometimes it's about sticking around until the work is done to receive that cold, rewarding beer to drink with the guys.

And then sometimes, when it is about the wine, and you have no idea what you are doing, it's ok to make a mistake like letting oxygen into the tube, or water into the tank. Because the details were not explicit and the questions were not known to be asked. Well, let's just hope that sometime's it's ok.

It is all about the in's and out's of a successful, functioning winery of a family-run Estate. So, yeah, sometimes it really is about learning about wine, frolicking around the vineyard, and drinking good wine. 

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