The Repo Man

As you probably know from reading Mike's posts, Harvest is in full swing. Or, it was when I started writing this. I've since lost track of when that was, so just bear with me here and pretend this is still a current event.

For us, harvest doesn't mean too much. By 'us' I of course mean Repo Red, the wine Paulie makes in the driveway so we have 'free' table wine all year long. By 'doesn't mean much' I am of course referring to the constant scrambling to try to find grapes, then traveling all over god's green earth to get them. Then crush them. But first bottle last year's wine because the wine basement only has so much space, which is basically...very little. So yeah, we've been doing a lot of tasting, blending, bottling, harvesting, crushing and barreling lately. Luckily we have lots of enthusiastic friends willing to help.

Eventually those friends get tired or have to move on into the work of dealing with their own projects, so this is when Paulie and I find ourselves hauling ass. I am not much for 'ass-hauling' and so I tend to get a bit grumpy during these times. It doesn't help that I have little to no free time lately, and so on those rare unicorn occasions that I do, Paulie always somehow wrangles me into giving up my precious time off from work in order to...work. For him. Doing physical labor. This is most often presented in a last-minute scenario, too, so that by this time in the season I am fearful of even sitting down at the computer to do any curating of Mortified pieces, or writing for myself, or working from the kitchen table of any sort because every time I do Paulie's spidey sense tells him I've just begun to relax and he immediately texts me to ask if I can drive to Dry Creek Valley to help him pick Syrah right now. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, these desperate pleas for help never come when I'm doing the dishes, or the laundry, or sweeping the stairs or cleaning the toilets. Only when I've juuuuust settled down to focus my mind on something other than chores and work.

Dammit!

Anyway. We did the afore-mentioned picking in Dry Creek Valley on a Friday, then after I got out of work on Sunday we hopped in the truck and drove to Amador County, where we got what appeared to be the last half ton of Syrah in the whole county. Seriously. Then we crushed it, pressed it, yadda yadda. I guess what I'm trying to say here is my back is really sore. That's pretty much what this rant is about.

I mean, there's so much leaning involved!

P.S. As I mentioned at the top, this post is a bit outdated. I'm happy to report that our Harvest is over, has been for a while, and now I've got plenty of time to finish the dishes. Balance in the universe has been restored.