A motley crew brings in the Benton-Lane Winery's record 2006 harvest over two intense weeks
story and photos by HOLLY LEITNER
O
n the last day of the 2006 season, rain begins to fall over the brown vineyard. Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women” blares from a tiny boom box, and the grapes either ferment or await their fate at the crush station.
Ryan Driscoll empties out the last tank of juice that has been holding for more than two weeks.He scoops up a handful of the cloudy, purple liquid and comments on how it’s gained good flavor in such a short time. It’s on the way to developing that velvet body Benton-Lane wines are known for.
Bin after bin of plump pinot noir grapes line the winery’s exterior. Forklifts run back and forth, scooping them up, moving thousands of pounds of the precious fruit toward a de-stemming machine. Workers’ purple hands pick out the unripe clusters, dropping them onto the purple-stained floor under the equipment. The Benton-Lane Winery crew’s crush season is coming to an end.
Crush season is the two-week window when grapes are plucked from their vines and put through the annual squeeze. It’s the time of the year when wine makers’ eyes bulge with the fear of losing an entire crop. The magic of harvesting is knowing when the grapes are at their maximum flavor potential.This is calculated in labs by testing sugar, acidity, and the taste of the grapes themselves.
It’s during these last dusty days of autumn, when nearly all the green vines have transformed into wrinkled golden leaves and rain clouds loom in the seven-day forecast, that the Willamette Valley wine crews bring in thousands of pounds of pinot noir and pinot gris grapes. The sun-drenched 2006 summer treated Willamette Valley grapes well, nearly doubling the yield throughout Oregon. This year’s crew has an unprecedented challenge ahead of them: to crush and ferment 475 tons of grapes.
Wine making was traditionally a family affair, with relatives picking and crushing the grapes themselves. Today, wineries hire help to ensure the grapes make it into the barrel in time, and a new sort of family emerges in the process.
Benton-Lane Winery’s 2006 crew is no different, yet the individuals live in diverse worlds away from their seasonal harvest work. Barrett Rosteck, the cellar master and self-titled cellar rat, heads the operation. Driscoll, a scientist who studies penguin and seal populations in Antarctica three months out of the year, contributes seasonal help. Another worker, Aaron Speck, just finished his degree in meteorology and now plans to open up a barbecue shack. Jessica Cortell is an exception, one of the few with an inclination toward wine making. She’s finishing her Ph.D. in enology at Oregon State University. Others work the harvest while in transition between jobs, and some are taking time off.
“Some people are just curious,” says Benton-Lane’s wine maker Tim Wilson. “They’re not really planning a career in wine making, but you can make a quick paycheck.”
It’s Monday of the first week, and the crew has already brought in sixty-four tons of grapes. There’s rain in the forecast for the upcoming Sunday. The pickers dump half-ton bins along the winery warehouse and race back up the dusty vineyard path. At the press station, Wilson steers a forklift, picking up each bin and dumping the grapes onto the conveyor belt leading into the de-stemmer. The grape clusters travel up the conveyor belt and are dumped in the machine, which plucks each grape from the cluster and spits them toward the press, all without breaking the skin. The grapes are spun, crushed, and poured into fermenting tubs and then into tanks for their ten-day fermentation. Finally, they are laid to rest in barrels, where the juice settles and the flavors develop for about a year.
This year's crew has an unprecedented challenge ahead of them: to crush and ferment 475 tons of grapes.
Within four days, a fraction of the original grapes remain lined up at the station. Rosteck predicts this should be the last day as he runs from station to station, his shirt turning a deeper shade of purple with each stop. Gallons of fermenting juice gush through a strainer and are then sent back to the press for another squeeze.
When the juice slows to a trickle, Rosteck knows it might mean the seeds and skins are clogging the flow. He punches the shovel through the clot and knocks on the tank to check for hollowness. He pauses, looks at a crew member in panic, raises his eyebrows, and then quickly throws his body against the manhole door and latches it. The biggest fears during the crush are broken equipment or a massive spill of precious juice.
The crew pulls in the last thirty-seven tons, and a handful of employees stay a few more weeks to finish the slow fermenting process. The workers clocked in long hours during the crush — one week they worked up to seventy. But the age-old stereotype of the simpler, happier winery lifestyle resonates, even amid state-of-the-art equipment.
When the crush weeks are over, the family gathers at a picnic table and raises its glasses to a job well done. People hand out slow-cooked steaks and pour from a bottle of pinot noir as the group reminisces. “It’s been an educational experience,” says Driscoll. “I didn’t know the details of wine making before.”
The crush weeks are about getting all the grapes in before the weather turns, but the harvest is also about the employees. “Hopefully, all these people can have some of the wine when it comes out next year — that’s the most rewarding part,” Rosteck says.
By participating in this process, the workers are now part of the winery’s history — connected to the bottles that line wine store shelves. They know too well the preliminary steps that go into creating a silky, cherry-infused pinot noir with mocha undertones and a hint of oak.
Above: Benton-Lane's 2006 crush crew. From left to right: Ryan Driscoll, Barrett Rosteck, Hugh Thompson, Aaron Speck, Phil Zweber, and Jessica Cortell. Below: Benton-Lane vineyards in October 2006. These slopes have optimal sunlight exposure and an ideal gradient — both necessary elements for growing pinot noir grapes.
