A "grape" time

Friday wine tasting
Friday night we went to a wine tasting event at International Market Square that was sponsored by City Pages. We had gone to a similar event in the spring, and we both thought this event was more lightly attended and, fortunately, had more food available to help soak up the wine. There were 64 tables, I think, with probably 50 of them being wine tables, and the others were random – Crispin or beer, massages, movie theaters, etc. I tasted 40 wines (some of which were just a sip out of Josh’s glass). I think we skipped the last 6 or so tables because we were just *done.* We had some good conversations with people and met a guy who reminded me a lot of Dave Llamas, which was fun. We got there right at six and bailed by probably 8.

My favorite wines were a Columbia Winery Cellar Master’s Riesling, Castle Rock Zinfandel, Gascon Malbec, Crios Malbec, and a Mionetto il Moscato. I tried a few pinots in preparation for our trip to the Willamette Valley this fall, but mostly stuck to things I’m pretty sure I’m going to like – red zins, malbecs, rieslings and moscatos. I guess that’s not really the point of a wine tasting, but so it goes! Most of the wines have a really decent price point, ranging in the $12 or less category, and all are available at MGM Liquor.

Grape picking
Josh’s alarm went off at the ridiculous hour of 6 a.m. I had set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. and, not realizing Josh had set his, kept trying to shut mine off – unsuccessfully. We peered outside to determine if we *really* had to go or not since it had been raining throughout the night, but we decided that even though it was foggy and damp, there was probably no getting out of it at this point. So, we hauled ourselves out of bed and I made us a hearty farm breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Pretty tasty, if I do say so myself! We put on plenty of layers, tracked down iPods and sunglasses and gloves, and were on our way.

We get to Parley Lake Winery outside of Waconia by 8 a.m. and are given some basic instructions. We are going to pick the gray block, half of which was picked the previous day. We got a pruning tool and told to hold clusters by the stems. You are to gently lay the grapes in the lugs (yellow carrying boxes), not just toss them in. Each lug can carry about 30 pounds of grapes, though they said new pickers generally do about 22 pounds per lug. I’m guessing mine were closer to the 30 pounds, ’cuz mine were FULL. You have to pay attention when picking grapes to watch out for half clusters or other detritus you don’t want in your wine. It was easy to miss clusters hidden behind poles, etc., so you had to go slow and have a careful eye.

We worked until 11 and, all in all, I thought it was a great time. Don’t get me wrong – it is hard work, and I have a whole new appreciation for farm workers who do this daily for hours and weeks at a time. They for sure deserve big bucks, which most of them likely do not get. I was starting to fade out a little by 10:30. I picked about 4.5 lugs, which should have been about 135 pounds of grapes. Go me!

I was glad to be in the Marquette grape fields, where the grapes were netted, because they had loud “bird in distress” calls over some of the other blocks, which would have driven me out of my tree. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and I’m glad we did the morning shift because it started getting pretty warm later in the day. There were probably about 10 of us working. Josh, me and one other guy ended up working about half an hour longer than anyone else because our last row was simply LADEN with grapes – e.g. I filled almost an entire lug with grapes from one six-foot section. Crazy! It is fairly dirty and wet work, plus my thumb is still purple from the grape juices. On the up side, you could eat as many grapes as you wanted and they were delicious. They were at 25 brix, or 25 percent sugar content. I suspect they will make some darn good wine!

Our "reward” for our hours of free farm labor was a bottle of wine and two wine glasses each (even though the LAST thing we need in our house is more wine glasses). We also got a free lunch, which was a hotdog. Oh well. I was annoyed that when we turned in our tickets for our free wine/glasses that the winemaker’s wife didn’t even bother to thank us for our time. I might have been a little more grateful if I were her.

The winemaker was starting to crush the grapes we had just picked before we even left, and we will have to buy a bottle of the Marquette wine when it is ready, in hopes that some of “our” grapes are in that bottle :)

As we were leaving Josh asked if I had noticed the vehicles of the other volunteer grape pickers – I hadn’t. Josh said they were all nice, yuppie-type vehicles that seemed to clearly indicate their owners were doing this just because it seems fun. Other than the expensive car, what does that make us?!