Photo credit: @stollerwine instagram
Dave signed up for this 5 month long internship at Stoller Family Estate and has been living at the intern house for the last 3 months. Up until now we’ve seen each other on most weekends, but since harvest started, we see each other two to three days a month. I am officially a harvest widow. It’s a new season of mourning the loss of a husband during harvest – I better get used to this!
His days in the cellar lately consist of an array of tasks from moving, cleaning and labeling barrels, to cap management at the end of the day. Cap management refers to the cap (consisting of the grape skins, seeds, and stems) that floats to the top of the wine. During fermentation, the carbon dioxide pushes these to the surface. Without any intervention, the juice will have little contact with the skins where much of the color and flavor/tannins are extracted and the cap can insulate heat, inactivating yeast and stopping fermentation. In addition, since the cap has contact with air, there’s an opportunity for aerobic bacteria to produce vinegar.
One might say cap management is arguably one of the most crucial tasks in wine making.
The cellar crew will perform punch downs where a tool is used to submerge the cap or pump overs where the wine is circulated on top of the cap. If you check out Dave’s Instagram feed, you’ll see videos of #capmanagement, specifically the pump over.
You really have to love the craft. He has been in the cellar over 12 hours daily, 6 to 7 days a week. And I can tell he truly enjoys it. Some people have asked me how I manage working, being pregnant, and raising our two daughters while he’s away. I tell them, I must love him a lot 🙂
Here’s a photo of Dave featured on yesterday’s Stoller Instagram post.
Just for laughs, here’s a well known version of cap management by Lucille Ball.
