What's he got to smile about?
VENDIMIA IS HERE! The Chilean wine harvest. As I am married to a wine maker this can only mean trouble.
My wife will need to get up before the sun, work long hours and get home very late, I may be able to stay awake long enough to say hi and get her some dinner. Sometimes we rarely see each other more than to pass in the hallway
Sometimes I wonder who this strange woman is that I occasionally meet at home. Then I remember, Oh yeah I married her, forgot what she looked like for a minute.
Early start and late finish! Bah humbug
BEER
Ask any winemaker what drink they most desire during harvest and I’ll bet you my cameras that 90% will say COLD BEER. If my wife gets home and there’s no beer in the fridge, then I am in trouble. If she sees me drinking wine, then I am in trouble. Her mouth is stained red and burning from tasting grapes and wine and tannins all day.Most of my friends in Chile work in the wine industry so basically from Mid March till May I have zero social life. My birthday is in April. I rarely get any kind of celebration, except maybe a beer at 3 am with an exhausted wife.
Barrels stuffed full of aging wine
What makes this all the worse, is that I am a wine photographer. I also have to work crazy hours. Photographing pickers, grape receptions, barrels, tanks, pump overs, punch downs, fermentation rooms, wine makers tasting grapes, wine makers fighting with cellar hands, wine makers panicking over lost trucks in Elqui bringing grapes to Colchagua. I have to make sure I know what grapes are being harvested! My agent, or worse still journalists who are held in much higher esteem than a lowly photographer, will send me menacing emails if I mistakenly call a merlot a syrah, or a sauvignon blanc a riesling
It's a grape, it's white, what more do you need to know?
Night harvest!
Nowadays certain wineries like to harvest at night. What’s this all about? So now I have the added problem of having to photograph people walking around vineyards picking grapes in the dark! Thank you Rudolph Steiner (you may need to google this chappie). So as my wife is returning home, I am now off out. In the last two years I have lost several lens caps, several cable releases, a headlight, a box of batteries, I have sprained both my ankles many times tripping over vines, falling down holes and bumping into sleeping harvesters.
Night harvesting, like my works not hard enough
So, when you next sit down to a good bottle of Chilean wine, think about all the hours, stress, fights, tasting and all other myriad of problems that went into that final great tasting drink. Don’t just quaff if, sip it, enjoy it and say cheers to all those poor souls who got it into that glass tube. Also maybe thank the poor wine widowers left at home, cooking, cleaning, getting the kids to school, and finally thank the poor mug who photographed it all.
SALUDOS
Some particularly good Chilean wine
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on March 10, 2011 at 9:12 am
I think part of the fault is from “Caminando por las Nubes” movie about wine. When I watched that movie I thought “What on Hell is that ch…t” Everything so pleasent, quiet, relax and poetic. My grandparents’ house in San Javier was a kind of Scotland Yard Headquarters in War state, during “la vendimia” or harvesting season. Lots of pickers on a queue waiting for their “galleta” their “fichas” and their “monos” to start the harvest, every morning before 6:00 AM. My grandmother on the kitchen, preparing ulpo, mate, wheat coffee and my grandfather arriving from the first “vueltecita” around the vineyard and the “cuartel” that this morning was ready for harvesting. The “capataz” waiting for the sign, for the first word of my grandad, to shout the dogs and scare the hens around the kitchen, when the command to start the season pass through the corredor to the queue. Every romantic idea of a harvesting season was broken by the frenetic, dirty, loud, fighting and hard activity on the fields. The kitchen was the only place where you could find refugee from the “spirit” of the vineyard, the bad tempered days and nights of my grandad, and the hot weather.
We lived, eat, thought, smell, breath and defecate harvest, grapes, tanins, mostos, sulfer, pampanitos and more, for a week, a month, two months, half year if was necessary.
Harvest season is not romantic, nice and cool. It is like the Hell on Hearth, and your life is touched and changed.
For a good bottle of wine you need so much people, time, effort, energy and passion, that I don’t understand why we Chileans, insist in going abroad with the 3B strategy (bueno, bonito y barato). I would like to see a bottle of Maule Valley brand over the £10. It is not a silly dream, it is the need to make a self reassure of our potential.
I celebrate the widow of Wine. You talk about something you know well.
Congratulation again, you have the passion for the wine… my grandfather would appreciate it very much so, coming from a “Gringo”.
on March 10, 2011 at 9:22 am
Hi Marcela, Thanks so much for this great comment. I see you understand La Vendimia well. I am sure a Maule wine over ten pounds is on it’s way. There are some super wines from that region. My wife is buying carignan grapes this year to use from that region. You must know Renan?
on March 10, 2011 at 10:14 am
Great post Matt- the inside story on the Crush season as experienced on the periphery. Would be fun to know what the kids have to say about it! In fact, your whole TOWN must be running lop-sided for the next few months! I hope you’ll keep these crush season posts and updates coming!
on March 10, 2011 at 10:26 am
I will try to Margaret.
Our kids call the winery where Andrea (my wife) works Baldes Grandes (meaning Big Buckets) In fact Andrea made a barrel of her own “garage” wine two years ago and she named it “Baldes Grandes”
on March 10, 2011 at 7:06 pm
good on ya matt !
I thought that was pretty funny the bit … bumping into sleeping harvesters
Cheers
on March 10, 2011 at 10:11 pm
Good post…I can only imagine how bitter sweet..or maybe just plain bitter the word vendimia must be for all of you sitting too close to that beautiful fire the rest of us love to stare at. Never seen it from the inside. Got to get a bit of that manic intensity with cherries, get the air freight space..but hold out until the product is packed to confirm, if you can…call the packing like a madman until it gets through SAG and in the airport…hope their frio is closer to 0 and not 10. Pure stress. But I still like to eat them.
Go get a cold one!
on March 11, 2011 at 1:09 am
I know Carignan, but nothing about Renan.
I come from a time of the “old industry”, where wine was made in Rauli Tanks, and you added a death dog, to improve things. From a time where a good red wine must be alcoholic to feel the devil of the season on your mouth, for an hour or two. From a period, where the red wines were called Reds, and the white wines, well, white wines were just called “del otro”.
I came from places, where form the first pressed grapes you get wine, from the second pressed you get wine, form the third pressed you get wine and from the third pressed, you get wine. Locations where you found the smashed grapes resting on cow’s leather bags, to have the first fermentation. Places where wine was “arranged” with Aguardiente, sugar, water, “aji”, chicha and who-knows-what-else-you-will-find. Old sanctuaries of el litriado, la chuica, la damajuana, la garrafa, la copita.
Definetively, from a time of anonymous creators of the first glories of Chilean wine.
on September 3, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Sounds like a tough life, Matt, but then again, it could be worse! A great insight here with your excellent shots and narrative.
on September 4, 2011 at 6:52 am
Cheers Andrew, I am not really complaining. Certainly being married to a winemaker has it’s pro side. I’m always asking her to bring her work home, and offering to help her with it.
on February 26, 2012 at 8:25 pm
you make me laugh Matt Wilson, your diary is getting better & better