Our family's journey into the Oregon wine industry
I’ll often meet people that are intrigued with Dave’s career choice. I thought it’d be fun to interview some of the winery interns Dave has had the chance to hang out with over the last several months to get an idea of what brings people […]
Winemaking is risky business. During our first two years in Corvallis, while Dave began the enology & viticulture program at Oregon State University, I worked in occupational medicine diagnosing and treating on the job injuries. So, it’s no wonder that the first time I toured […]
This past weekend was our 10 year wedding anniversary, so the girls and I packed our bags to visit Dave at the winery. It’s one thing to see Dave post instagram pics of his internship adventures, but witnessing firsthand is so refreshing. Someone seriously needs to produce a reality show about the life of a winery intern.
On Thursday night around 8pm, I drove up to the production facility where they were still working late into the night. Forklifts moving empty bins, the destemmer running full steam, the ground slippery from grape juice. The cellar interns started the day at 8am. If it’s a picking day, Dave starts his day at 6:30am in the vineyard then heads to the cellar at 8:30am. When harvest is in full swing, interns log anywhere from 70-90 hours a week.
Every night Dave and I chat before I put the girls to sleep, and most of the time, the interns from different wineries will gather at a select intern house to share a meal, have a drink, and swap stories. This week was a crazy work week though because the forecast projected rain over the weekend, so they harvested 200 tons in a day. When they got back around 10pm on Thursday night, they basically crashed. If this type of thing still sounds enticing to you, keep reading.
Dave’s three Stoller intern housemates are all internationals from Italy or France. On Friday night, I got a chance to meet some other interns from different wineries in the Willamette Valley.
What brings winery interns to Oregon? So far what I’ve gathered:
How to find a winery internship in Oregon?
Start the search early. If you’re looking for a harvest internship position, start the search around April or May. This is about the time that wineries will start posting vineyard and gradually cellar positions.
Dave landed his current vineyard/cellar position after applying to over 10 wineries, interviewing for a few, and finally deciding on one that suited his desire to get both the vineyard and cellar experience. He heard about this specific internship by word of mouth initially, then saw a posting on OWRI.
If you’re desiring a romantic experience of working at a winery or an easy buck, this is NOT the job for you. You likely will not survive past the first week. It requires long, grueling hours of manual labor – something that is difficult to endure without a true interest in the science behind winemaking.
If you’re an oregon winery intern, comment below about how you landed your internship.
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 […]
I have to say, one of the things we miss most about living in Southern California, now living in a remote college town, are the diverse food options. We’ve come to do a lot of cooking at home. Dave is a huge fan of noodles […]
(Continued from Garage Winemaking – Part 1)
Harvest day is a labor intensive day, reaping the bounty of a season’s hard work of tending, pruning, and trellising the vineyard. The rain came and went and our friend Beau had arrived for the week of winemaking. The guys headed to Borgo Pass Vineyards early in the morning after grabbing some breakfast and 10 lbs of dry ice.
The guys were assigned two rows on the vineyard by Mark, the vineyard manager, and they went to filling three large buckets of the ripe pinot noir grapes. After the 230 lbs of grapes were picked, they went through the destemmer-crusher to do the obvious and were collected in a food grade Rubber Maid brute. You will soon find that we buy everything on Amazon.
Dave then weighed and added Potassium MetabiSulfite (KMBS), which is an additive to prevent oxidation and microbial growth of wild microorganisms. Then, he added pectinase which is an enzyme that breaks down pectin to prevent haziness in the wine. Some people say to wait 12 hours after adding the pectinase to add the KMBS, but others choose to add them at the same time to reduce the risk of the juice going bad during those 12 hours. They chose the latter.
After we drove these bad boys home (the buckets, not the guys), we did a cold soak. Adding dry ice drops the temperature of the grapes to stall fermentation and allow a longer time for the crushed grapes to soak and extract more color and flavor from the skins.
Cold soaks are typically within the 55-60 degree Fahrenheit range. After the cold soak, they’ll add a pinot noir specific yeast to begin fermentation.
Here were their supplies: Star-San 32 oz sanitizer, sponges, scale, refractometer, Kimwipes, distilled water, ACM Economy wash bottle, PBW cleaner. The final brix from picking was 24. Ideal.
We ended the day with a harvest day pot roast courtesy of Ree Drummond in our Le Creuset Signature Enameled Cast-Iron Oval French Dutch Oven and turned in early for the night. This was just a mini glimpse of what harvest is like at a winery. Two measly rows of grapes. It’s mind boggling to think of the attention and manpower required to manage a couple hundred acre vineyard. A hard earned day of work begs to be rewarded with a hearty meal.
This week in Oregon, it’s the start of a wet week with the forecast showing rain for the next 5 days during prime harvest time. Dave just finished an intense week of working the vineyard and cellar at Stoller Family Estate. Lots of unloading of fresh picked grapes into bins, destemming and preparation to be pressed. He was rewarded with ribs and brisket. Sweet perks of working with people who are equally passionate about good food and wine.
Exactly two years ago, I started documenting Dave’s garage winemaking adventures with his friend Beau Mora from Temecula. Dave found a local vineyard through a connection at Corvallis Brewing Supply called Borgo Pass Vineyards. If you ever have a chance to stop by the store, […]
This marks my first season of being a harvest widow. Three years ago, when we left California for Dave to start his enology studies at Oregon State University, I never really processed what it would mean for me to be married to a winemaker and […]
Just a little over three and a half years ago, Dave and I were living in Murrieta, CA (Temecula wine country) and decided to take a road trip up to Napa with our then 6 month old daughter. Who knew that this little trip would change the trajectory of our lives completely?
We were a double income family, living rent free with my mother-in-law who ran a family owned Japanese restaurant, easily spending $5000 monthly and saving the same amount or more each month. We had it good. Free rent, free sushi.
Some might say we were pretty set, living the good life – which we were. Dave was managing the restaurant, singing on the weekends at local wineries with our family band, working part time as a lab tech at a winery, and I was working full time as a family nurse practitioner. We lived in a gated community in a 3500 square foot home with plenty of extended family within driving distance.
Find a passion.
Dave had an interest in craft beer and was introduced to home brewing by a good friend, Pasadena neighbor, fellow grad student and photoblogger (Ben Wideman) during our time in grad school. It was only when our band, Dave and the Cousins, started performing at local wineries that he began to develop an affinity to wine. Free wine during performances will do that. Dave began volunteering at Temecula Valley Winery Management Company, the company that produces wines for Leoness Cellars and Crush and Brew, which were regular performance venues for Dave. This turned into a part time job as a lab tech.
Get inspired.
In January of 2014, we set off for a 3 day trip to Napa and fell in love with the art and science of winemaking. Dave had toyed with the idea of becoming a winemaker for the last few months leading up to the trip, getting glimpses of what it takes from boss and Leoness winemaker Tim Kramer. On our last night in Napa, our daughter Olivia was sound asleep in her play pen while the two of us lay wide awake – Dave had tossed out this crazy idea that we would quit both our jobs and leave our families to pursue this dream… and it may have been the long hours on the road, the wine, the ambience of the vineyards, but I was crazy enough to think LET’S DO IT!
Quit your job.
In just 5 short months, we had done it. We quit our jobs and left our friends and family to move to Corvallis, Oregon… site unseen, by the way. That drive in from the I-5 on the 34W may have been one of the longest drives of our lives, looking at this huge stretch of farmland with equal doses of anticipation and terror. Dave had not yet been accepted into Oregon State University’s Enology & Viticulture program yet – he still needed to take his pre reqs at Linn Benton Community College – but we took a leap of faith and three years later here we are.
Throw in some babies into the mix.
I might mention I was four weeks pregnant with our youngest daughter Adeline when we drove up to Oregon with our 9 month old and had no idea.
Jump right in!
Dave needs to wait a full year to finish up a couple classes that are offered next spring of 2018 to graduate. So during this 9 month hiatus, he took up a five month long vineyard and cellar internship at Stoller Family Estate in Dayton, OR. Because of the long work hours and concern for safety, we decided it’d be best that he stay at their intern house and the girls and I stay in Corvallis to hold down the fort. With a week left before his internship began, we found out that I was pregnant again with our third child.
If Dave had told me 10 years ago while tying the knot (our tenth wedding anniversary is approaching this year) that I’d be single parenting intermittently for 5 months with two young children and another on the way while working 30 hours a week, I probably would’ve walked away – but it’s a strange thing what love, marriage, and raising a family does to realign values and priorities.
So today, after summing up the last three and a half years of our lives in a nutshell, I write this as the girls are napping and Dave is finishing up his week of work on the vineyard to drive home today to join us for the weekend. From dating in Vancouver, Canada, to newlyweds in Southern California, to a growing family in Oregon, we’ve come to love the west coast and specifically what the beautiful state of Oregon has to offer. Home is a relative term for us and I’ve concluded with all this moving around that home is where Dave is and I’m sure he’d say the same about me.
To be continued…
I hope to eventually share with you the happy ending of how Dave becomes a winemaker in Oregon (that our sudden upheaval of our lives wasn’t for nothing) and the crazy things we sign ourselves up for to get us there – hopefully one day owning a winery of our own.
