Week 8: Boats, kittens, and the battle against boredom

And just like that, there were no more grapes.

In the beginning, there were a couple weeks where we were only getting one or two trucks a day. I remember Eric talking smack about it too; he didn’t think it would ever get as busy as the full timers said it would. Slowly but surely though, we started getting more and more trucks, and before long we were in the thick of it. After 4 weeks of frayed nerves, spilt wine, and never enough sleep, the last truck dumped the last of the grapes into the receival bin. I remember it well: It was a dreary April day, and I was down in the vintage lab taking the brix on all of the ferment round samples. One of the receival bins is right outside the window of the vintage lab, so when a truck pulled up to dump its load of sauv blanc I barely noticed. However, a few minutes later, I heard a voice coming from the winemaker’s office across the hall. It was Greg, the winery manager.

“That’s the last truck. We’re done.”

Wait, what?

I could barely believe it. Things had slowed down quite a bit at the winery in the days prior, but I never thought that we would actually be done with harvest. No more press samples? No more must or juice samples? Huh?!?! Suddenly, my days became significantly less frantic. I hardly knew what to do with myself, first the grape samples stopped coming, depriving me of quality time with my garlic press, and then the grapes themselves had stopped. What on earth was I to do with my time?

The answer to that question came a lot more quickly than I would have liked: start cleaning. Clean the used test tubes, clean the pipettes, clean the sulfur apparatus, clean the centrifuge, clean the countertops, push buttons to make the FTIR clean itself, mop the floor, etc. I spent the first couple hours of my days helping on ferment round, then spent the second couple hours collecting my RS samples and running them through the FTIR, and then whatever was left of my day cleaning the lab. Some days the yeast team would rescue me and give me a couple additions to do, but then I would just go back to cleaning. Tina also has a knack of finding obscure things that “need” to be cleaned as well, so I quickly had to learn the ancient art of diddle-daddle do, or how to look busy when there is nothing to do; a difficult feet, especially when your boss never more than 15 feet away from you for the majority of the day. And so life continued.

There were two notable events of the last week (actually, there were three, but the first two are sort of being run together, for reasons that will soon be made clear). The first was the long awaited post-harvest party. At first we didn’t think that there was going to be one, the head winemaker was under pressure to cut costs, and vintage memorabilia (shirts or jackets that have something like “Mud House vintage 2011” written on them) and the harvest party were on the chopping block. At the behest of the rest of the full time staff, we got our harvest party; we were not so lucky with the t-shirts. That said, the winemakers working for Astrolabe, one of Mud House’s client labels, surprised us with a vintage t-shirt, so everyone was still happy. And truthfully, I’m really flattered to be associated with Astrolabe as opposed to Mud House: after having sampled a majority of both label’s table wines, Astrolabe makes consistently better tasting and better smelling wines. I’m getting sidetracked, back to the harvest party!

The full time staff did their best to keep the details of the party a secret from the vintage employees, but word still got out: we would be renting a boat out of Picton and taking a cruise around Queen Charlotte Sound. Food and gratuitous amounts of wine and beer would be provided. It would have been nice if they had picked another day to have the party, it was pretty cold and a little wet out on the water. I actually didn’t mind that I couldn’t appreciate the beautiful scenery during the party, as I had taken a trip to Picton with the Oyster Bay crew and had actually taken a cruise around the sound already, and it had been a beautiful day. But I digest…errr…digress. A fantastic time was had by most everyone on the cruise: one person got a bit sick, and for a moment a few of us thought a fight was going to break out between a couple of other vintage workers, but nothing terribly bad happened. Overall, the lot of us ate, drank, and were merry for the duration of the cruise, and into the night afterwards. I snapped a lot of really good photos as well, but the majority of them you are going to have to view through facebook. As was the case with all harvest parties, there were a few occurrences that could be classified as “juicy gossip,” but you aren’t going to get any of that here. Regardless, we all had a great time, and after the festivities nobody passed out under a bush or in front of McDonald’s, we all made it home to bed.

Then next event occurred quite by chance. Despite the significant drop in the number of productive things to do in the lab, there was still occasion for the yeast team to come to my rescue and put me to work. It was on one such occasion that my day took a turn for the incredibly cute. I was setting up an inoculation on one of our 270,000 liter tanks, when I noticed that Maighan and Allison, two of the tank farm workers, were standing in the middle of the walkway, both looking intently and smiling at something Maighan was holding. I got closer and realized that the object of their interest was a small, blue-eyed, very vocal kitten. She had noticed it walking along the side of one of the neighboring buildings, and had apparently saved it from being run over by a tanker. The kitten, which we later named Muddy, was quite distraught, and was definitely undernourished. But Muddy was very friendly, so Maighan decided to take it back to the break room, give it some food and water, and then try and call the local animal shelter. Smiling inwardly at the events that had transpired, and fully confident that this story would have a happy ending, I finished setting up the inoculation.

However, Muddy’s story wasn’t over yet. The animal shelter couldn’t come out and pick him up until tomorrow, so that means that they needed to keep him somewhere until then. Jenna, one of the girls in the red cellar, offered to take him back to Duncannon with her after the shift was over, but that was still a couple hours away. In the meantime, the needed to put Muddy somewhere out of the way, where he wouldn’t get into trouble, and wouldn’t get run over by a forklift. So, they put him in the lab.

I came back to the lab after the inoculation, and found Muddy sitting on the lab floor, staring up at Tina, expressing his discontent with his current lodgings. At this point any hope of getting anything productive done that evening were long gone; everyone wanted to come up to the lab and pet the kitten. Tina still had a bit of work to do, so it fell to me to occupy the kitten while Tina worked. That’s right folks, for the last two hours of the shift, it was my job to play with a kitten. On that day, for that short period of time, I had the best job in the world. It doesn’t matter if you are a dog person, it doesn’t even matter if you are allergic to cats: if you are having a terrible day, playing with a kitten will turn it around. And if you are having a great day, the kitten will make it that much greater.

After the shift ended, I helped Jenna smuggle Muddy into Duncannon and into Jenna’s room. The Duncannon management never found out about the kitten, and Jenna later found Muddy a home with one of the permanent staff at Oyster Bay. Everyone is happy that Muddy found a new home, even if it wasn’t with any of us.

That’s all for now. I declared my last day of work as Friday, May 6, so I only have a few days left at Mud House. It’s been an interesting experience, there has been some good and some bad, and I need the next week to think about it before I pass judgement on it. Until then, see ya!

-DK