On Thursday September 3^rd I started my job as a harvest intern at Bergevin Lane Winery in Walla Walla, Washington.  This is my first time in the state of Washington and my first time working in the production side of the wine industry. In preparation for the WSET Diploma Course I need to have a complete understanding of wine production, so in addition to reading David Bird’s “Understanding Wine Technology,” I wanted to see things first hand.  I tend to learn things better when I get hands-on experience and this venture will contribute skills and knowledge that the book simply cannot.  This opportunity will allow me to see what is really done on the production side of an almost mythical business that transforms the simple juice of the grape into an art that intrigues millions of people and for some, like myself, evokes a passion to pursue every aspect of wine and never stop learning.

My first day at the winery was the first of many long and hard working days.  I was the first harvest employee to start at the winery so I was immediately tasked to begin the prepping all of the equipment for crush.  The first thing that I learned was the surgical-like sanitation requirements that everything has to go through in order to be used for making wine.  Everything has to be rinsed with water, then scrubbed with a solution called proxy clean (an oxidizing cleaning solution similar to the well known oxy clean), rinsed again, then rinsed with citric acid (which neutralizes the proxy residue), rinsed again with cool water and then rinsed with ozonated water.  Ozonated water is created by an ozone generator that converts cool water into ozonated water (H₂O →H₂O +O₃). Normal oxygen that we breathe has two oxygen atoms, whereas ozone (O₃) contains an extra oxygen atom that makes it unstable and when released into the air it disperses as a gas.  Ozone is the second most powerful sterilizer in the world and can destroy bacteria, viruses and odors, so when applied to our equipment it ensures that all harmful micro-organism that could contaminate the wine are destroyed.  This six step process is tedious and very time consuming.  Imagine if you get to the last step and then you touch the ground or something else with a piece of equipment, guess what? YOU START ALL OVER!  Nothing touches the ground, water hoses, valves, brushes, I mean nothing or you screw the whole thing up and have to re-sanitize everything.

My first big project was to clean fifty something picking bins using this process and it took me two days.  These are the bins that will go to the vineyard and carry the fresh picked fruit back to us at the winery.  The inside of the bins have to be completely sterile so the fruit is not contaminated.  After each bin gets the full sanitation, it’s left to dry and then right before it goes out it gets rinsed with 180° water and ozoned so that it is pristine when the fruit gets dumped in.  The entire operation from the equipment to handling the fruit revolves around a complete sterile environment.  I quickly learned that 75% of my job is sanitation.  All of us interns are now officially an obsessive compulsive cleaning crew.