Friday, July 22, 2011

Montelena's Happy Vineyard Crew

My co-workers - the people who make up the great, hard-working vineyard crew at Chateau Montelena – really help to make my time in the vineyard enjoyable. They are also good, patient teachers, and a lot of the fun for me has been practicing my Spanish as we try to understand each other. Placido and Beto (foreman and supervisor) do speak English but most of the crew are as limited with their English as I am with my Spanish. Yet we carry on conversations as we work, and somehow I know about their lives and they know something about mine. Most importantly, the language barrier hasn’t hampered their ability to explain something, or mine to comprehend. Last week I was partnered with Jose for the morning and he showed me a very efficient way to do leafing in the fruit zone. Clusters are getting big now, and it’s important to allow appropriate sun exposure and adequate ventilation around the berries. Jose demonstrated how to lift the canopy with one hand, kind of like looking under the hood of a car, and using the other hand to “comb” through and pull off leaves, working fast but taking care not to accidentally pull off a cluster of grapes. With experience it is possible to work quickly and avoid the fruit, but the key of course is to end up allowing enough sun exposure on the clusters but not so much you risk sunburn. I told Jose he was “muy rapido” but that I was “lento(a)” – slow. Somehow he made me feel that I was still doing a good job. On Wednesday, I was part of a small team tasked with dropping fruit from some young vines. Even knowing why this has to be done (keeping vine yields low to produce grapes with more flavor and intensity) still doesn’t make it any easier to snip off a perfectly beautiful cluster and throw it in a pile where it will shrivel and die in a matter of hours! Depending on the size of the shoot, I was told to leave two, one, or no cluster. The heat was back with us today, and the work was hard. But I continue to be impressed and amazed that my coworkers are always smiling, singing, and happy. Amidst their laughter and chatter, I can sometimes pick out a word or two or a phrase I understand. Most of all, listening to them passes the time and makes me smile, and I am grateful for this experience.

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