Tank Vacancy & Pre-Turkey Day Topping

The cellar is an eerie place these days. Its spotless, vacant walkways lined with hollow tanks give no indication of the furious activity this very space beheld just a couple of weeks ago. The action is outside now and the crew continues as though nothing much has changed. It’s as though we are all in on this little secret that was the hectic harvest and now we continue at a normal pace as though this is how it’s always been. But I guess that’s just how life is. We share a meaningful moment with others and it feels like life should pause for us to appreciate together its significance, but of course life cannot. Time barrels ahead leaving us alone to process the fleeting moments through our individual recollections of them. It’s the times like Thanksgiving, which give us the opportunity to pause together and to reflect collectively. This year I am thankful for a time to give thanks!

Lony and Pablo topping barrels of 2010 Chardonnay.

Anyway, the action is outside the cellar on the crush pad now. The press runs with the contents of the last few tanks of young wine, the newly-filled barrels of Chardonnay are brought outside for stirring, and the older vintage wines brought outside for topping.

 Peju’s signature Sycamores have been stripped of their leaves for the winter, their spindly, exposed limbs a beacon for the brisk season ahead.

Well I wish you all a joyful, meaningful, restorative, fun and delicious Thanksgiving weekend. What will you drink with your turkey? I wonder how many people don’t actually eat turkey on thanksgiving… food and wine for thought...

Have a good one!

Cheers,

Britt

Topping

Peju Sycamores, Trimmed for Wintertime

With All Our Grapes Safely in Tank and Barrel, We Begin Our Descent Into Winter Calm.

The last of the fruit-carrying bins
leave the crush pad

 That's not quite all folks, but we have brought in the last of our fruit. Friday the 4th marks the end of the 2011 Crush, nearly a month later than 2007's October 11 end date, but sooner than we were thinking it would be a few weeks ago.

With the number of work orders diminishing each day, the cellar dance has changed from a swift and sprightly Viennese waltz to the more moderately-tempoed American variety. I watch the team work now and I imagine the cellar like one giant music box with the song coming to an end and all the players slowing simultaneously to a halt as the box lid closes us inside the dark, quiet of winter. We can no longer celebrate (or commiserate in) the craziness of being ‘in the middle of Harvest’, yet there is still work to do. Interns and temporary workers are starting to prepare for their migration to the other side of the equator for the next one. The high of Harvest end’s cheer and festivity gives way to the realization of what will pretty immediately follow: a (relatively) cold, wet winter with less time in the day and less people in the Valley. But whoa woe, it is also the Holiday Season! Americans’ favorite time of year! A time when opportunity abounds to spend quality time with family and friends. A time of reflection and joy and thankfulness and snuggling in tight. A time of cooking up old traditions, of getting inventive with those that have gone stale, and a time when red wine never tasted so good. 

Much of what is now 2011 red wine in the Peju cellar has been drained and pressed, though a handful of ferments are still finishing up. When a ferment finishes, Sara usually lets the wine mingle with the skins in the tank for a bit before pressing off the skins and putting the wine into French and American oak barrels to age. This prolonged contact of the wine with the skins at the end of fermentation is called ‘extended maceration.’ Maceration is simply the name given to the process by which all that good stuff in the skins is extracted by the juice. This occurs naturally upon contact with one another. Phenolic compounds give color to what would otherwise be clear(ish) juice and tannins give structure/body to the wine, which also give it the potential to age. Sara does a cold maceration at the beginning of each ferment, too, to allow the pre-fermented juice to extract water-soluble components. The water-soluble components are less likely to be extracted once alcohol is produced in the juice during fermentation. It is all of these numerous steps taken to ensure that the wine maximizes complexity, concentration and integration which distinguishes ‘fine wine’ from the rest, and makes it so-o fine.

Below is the mouth of a tank that has just been drained and sent to press and then barrel. What you don’t see is that in order to empty the tank to the extent it appears here, a member of the team has to climb into the tank through this very opening to shovel out the skins, all the while attached by a harness to a fellow crew member outside the tank in the event of a Carbon Dioxide overdose, which is an actual cause of death during every harvest!!! Yet another example of just how much goes into the production of a bottle of wine.

Quality Control Lab Tech Nick presses the last truck samples for testing.

The last yeast inoculation.

Asbel represents our collective joy at this being the last time we will have to clean the crusher-destemmer!!

And resourceful, winemaker Sara sabers a bottle of bubbly with a draining-valve clamp to honor a Phase-One well done.

Cheers!

The Cellar Team at the After(Crush) Party on the Peju Crushpad

Stay tuned because there is work left to do and words left to write for Harvest 2011!

Until next time,

Britt

Be sure to check out our spanking new Holiday Catalog. It's hot off the press with a whole slew of lip-smacking new releases from Peju. 

May you always have cheer in your cheeks and great wine in your glass! 

Yellow Vines, Whinnying Winds, Seasons Change. That Was Fast.

Three days ago I looked around at my cluttered desk and three-page to-do list and decided to take a stroll through the vineyard. Perspective was indeed gained when I stepped outside and into a different season. Wasn't it just last week that the vines were green, that we were in the midst of harvest, and that much to everyone's relief, the midday sun shone hotly on our ever-ripening fruit? With a high of 60 degrees F, 20% chance of rain, and wily, whispering winds blowing yellow leaves from the exposed vines, today we have no choice but to accept that Autumn is here, and Winter confoundingly close. 

Cabernet Sauvignon Vine, Peju Rutherford Estate
Mid-Morning, November 3, 2011

Cabernet Sauvignon Vine, Peju Rutherford Estate
Mid-Morning, November 3, 2011

Cabernet Sauvignon Vine, Peju Rutherford Estate
Mid-Morning, November 3, 2011

Cabernet Sauvignon Vine, Peju Rutherford Estate
Mid-Morning, November 3, 2011

Tomorrow, we bring in the last of our fruit. But of course there is still much work to be done. Fermentations will be finishing, we will drain and press and clean out tanks, and transfer freshly fermented wines to their new homes in French and American oak barrels where they will live and breathe and age and develop for the next 12-36 months, depending on the wine. 


I can't believe I took those photos above just this morning. I'm feeling a strange mixture of marvel at the novelty and beauty of the changed surroundings, and anxiety about the frenzied, fleeting passing of time. But this is nothing new!


What's the weather like where you are?


Autumn cheer and cheers!
britt

It's a Happy Halloween at Peju!

Every year for Halloween, Peju employees furtively collaborate within their respective departments to vie for the title of Costume Competition Winner at the annual Halloween Family Meal. This year, as has been the case almost every year since Sara has been at Peju, the Production Team garnered the departmental win! Their group effort in a time of such harvest hectic-ness is inspiring. Other costume creations comprised Jersey Housewives, a couple of pirates, one Zorro, one Sumo Wrestler, and Tony Peju delighted us all with a shockingly accurate, surprise Papa Smurf performance. 


As of today, we've brought in 76% of our total crop. Sara aims to harvest all remaining fruit by this Friday. It's all fermenting, pressing & barreling down from there! 


Sheri, our Production Planner, gave me some "fun facts" today. (Visit the 'Meet the Team' page above for photos and titles of everyone on the Production team.)
These are the dates on which we had brought in the last of our fruit over the past four years:
October 11, 2007
October 28, 2008
October 25, 2009
November 1, 2010


And if all goes to plan, it will be November 4 in 2011. Not bad considering we started harvest 4 weeks later this year than in 2009. And by 'not bad' I mean 'this was one logistical nightmare' with the same number of tanks as in years past and around the same amount of fruit coming in, only this year in a much more condensed period of time. Sara and Joe had to use acute foresight to plan their tank assignments and rotations, making sure to align when to bring the fruit in (dependent on nature) with how much fruit had been predicted to come in (a tough (inexact) science) with what kind of tank space would be available at that time. Who knew such a big part of wine-making could be about the logistics of coordinating ripening with fermentations with tank space.


At the Family Meal today, Sara gave us a harvest-time update:

Signing off and wishing you a Happy Halloween! It's Trick-or-Drink in many of the small towns that line the Napa Valley. Adults go door to door with plastic, portable wine glasses and greet their neighbors over splashes of delicious, Napa Valley wine. It's something one hears over and over out here, but has truly been my experience: that in Napa Valley, people really know how to live. (More specifically, people prioritize enjoying life everyday. And I think this is good.)

Halloween Cheer and Cheers!

britt

Peju's Biggest Day Ever!! And Sisters Work Together

30 tons of red fruit and 20 tons of white came in today. This is completely insane. (For us.) I think on our biggest day last year we brought in 28 tons of fruit. I don’t know how they are going to get through 50 tons today. Oh, and they also received a shipment of new French oak barrels. 

New Barrels (front), Sorting Red (back left), Pressing White Simultaneously (center back)

Jose says, "Today is crazy!"

Two people on the sorting table, two driving fork lifts, one raking the raichus-- which I can’t for the life of me figure out how to spell and I’m starting to wonder if the term actually exists or if Sara made it up. Doubt it-- Anyway, one raking the stems that get shot out of the crusher/destemmer after the grapes have been spun off and pumped into the tank, four conducting pumpovers, tank transfers, and racking. 

Oscar Rakes Raichus (sp.)

Same Stuff (the stems that come out of the crusher/destemmer)

Lisa Peju is here today. She has a few days to "relax" at home (at the winery, really) between restaurant and wine shop visits around the country, and chose to spend this one in the cellar! Last year, she and I were the lone/rogue harvest interns. I say 'rogue' because neither of us had all that much experience. But we were avid and according to Sara, excellent students.  

Lisa sets up a tank transfer

Ariana measures height of wine in tank

So I just went out to the cellar to see how everyone was doing, and Israel, Miguel and Sara all said to me separately, "Are you going to come help?!" with a tone of desperation that made it impossible for me to say no, so I'll have to write more later because the grapes won't wait! Earlier today, Ariana looked a little skeptical at the idea of doing a pumpover by herself. Now she is in the midst of a few at one time. Today is crazy!!! This harvest is nuts!


Some quick photos and tomorrow I'll let you know how it went! 

Lisa, Ariana & Jose converting inches high to gallons full (wine in tank, see above related photo)

And from just a moment ago:

Israel throws around 10 gallon buckets of grape skins like it's his
job (oh right, it is) while Nick rolls 1/2 ton bins around the cellar, n.b.d.
Nick, our Quality Control Lab Tech, can normally be found in the lab.
It's all hands in cellar today.

Ariana sets up a pumpover

Sara checks in with Ariana 

This is full of heavy grape skins!

Harvest is hard work!

So much going on today that Sheri leaves her Production Planner

duties in the office to help out in the cellar.

Jose and Ariana drain the lees from the bottom of a tank that just went to press.

Wish us luck!

Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon from the HB Vineyard

Harvest Hustle & Making Chardonnay

Finally! The cellar is cranking!!! Today is the first day that it feels like harvest is in full gear. Most other times when I’ve skipped over to the Production office to chat Sara up about what’s going on, she is excited to talk to me. She beams and expands willingly on what we’re doing and why we do things the way we do. (Always for superlative quality.) She talks about the grapes with a Science-minded mother’s balance of rational analysis and though somewhat-concealed, nonetheless fuzzy, tender babymama love. As any good mother, she knows she has little control over the laws of Nature and will love the grapes, all of them and every vintage, for who/what they are, while she guides them to realize their potential slash achieve perfection. (So there’s a streak of Tiger mom...in the name of perfect wine!)

When I ask Sara what is going on in the cellar today, I get bullets:

•                  “draining and pressing,

•                  “barreling down,

•                  “crushing,

•                  “sorting,

•                  “topping,

•                  “stirring the Chardonnay,

[pause.]

•                  “Rocking and rolling!” She exclaims. “It feels like Harvest!”

All of our Chardonnay has finished its primary fermentation, has been consolidated into oak barrels, and is now going through Malolactic Fermentation (MLF), or as it’s sometimes referred to, quite simply secondary fermentation. Primary fermentation is when yeast convert the sugar in the juice into alcohol and CO2 to produce wine (obviously a drastic oversimplification). MLF is when (via specific bacteria) we convert the Granny Smith-reminiscent malic acid into the lactic acid that is found in milk.  Diacetyl, a prominent compound in butter, is produced, which is what gives so many California Chardonnays their characteristic ‘butteriness’.  By stirring the lees once per week (lees are the dead yeast cells and un-soluble solids) for approximately 6 months in what’s called sur lie aging,  our winemaking team allows the diacetyl to dissipate a bit, resulting in the more elegant, subtle hint-of-butter sensation that you might have noticed in our Chardonnay.

Though Sara had to be concise with me today, after a few moments of rattling off the facts, she couldn’t help but gush a little over how delicious the Malbec and Petit Verdot are tasting. This is the first year that we’ve gotten much yield from those small blocks on our Rutherford estate since they’re just a few years old and it takes three years for a vine to start producing. Last year we got less than a ton of each. This year, however, we got enough fruit to put to good use, and apparently, it is tasting excitingly delicious. Sara is not sure where she will blend these lots once they are ready, but looks forward to being able to make a true Bordeaux blend with such high quality fruit in all five requisite varietals.

It’s sorting fruit, inoculating yeast, and pumping over the ferments for me tomorrow in the cellar. (YAY!!) Stay tuned.

Today at Peju: Yeast, Zin in Bins, and Making Rose

Lots going on at Peju today! 

 Ariana is inoculating the Zinfandel we pressed yesterday. These yeast started out in dormant, powder form. 

Watch the vid:

 Frankie pumps small-lot Zinfandel into 1/2-ton bins.

And we are in the process of creating what will become 

our 2011 Rose of Syrah. Here's a sneak peek! 

Mutinous Mother Nature

It’s a real nail-biter, this 2011 harvest. Or as assistant winemaker Joe says, it’s “one year that Mother Nature is not cooperating.”

The sun has come out this afternoon, and it’s almost as though the breeze that left with the rain this morning was a collective sigh of relief from winemakers throughout the Valley. It has been raining for over a week with a tease-of-a short, sunny respite this past weekend. Most of the grapes simply aren’t quite ripe yet, so it’s a gamble as to when to bring fruit in. Wait and hope the right weather comes to ripen fruit to its potential, and risk rain that’s unrelenting? Or play it safe and bring in now what you’ve already got? The fruit is not as concentrated and scrumptious as anyone would like, but picking now would pre-empt the potentially major loss of yield that would occur if these damp grapes continue to get no love from the sun and start to mold.

Luckily for us and for our wine (and it’s no accident), Sara is a unique, dynamic blend of an optimist and a perfectionist. She’s also this awesome combo of serious scientist, positive energy force, and sensory-sensitive sweetheart with super smarts, sass, and a proclivity to fun. Anyway, she believes the weather will change, that the fruit will ripen beautifully, and that the wine will be delicious as always. And she won’t settle for anything less. “We’re taking the risk!” she says. “To ensure the best quality of fruit. With ripe tannins and good sugars and all the other delicious things. Mmm…” She pauses, smiling with an excited glint in her eye. Then she continues seriously, “It will just mean an action-packed couple of weeks of harvest, as we have fewer days than ever before to process all of our fruit.” But I can’t think of anything more rewarding than busting your boots with a group of people for a common goal. I’ll be out there tomorrow!

In the vineyard, the crew is busy opening the vines’ canopy, or removing leaves to concentrate the plant’s energy into ripening the fruit.

And this afternoon is turning out to be a bright blue beauty, so nail-bitten fingers crossed it stays. It’s amazing how quickly a little direct sunlight evaporates the melancholy ennui of a week of rain. Let’s hope it does the same for the grapes’ moistened skins!

Peju Sycamores with Sunshine

Clouds for a Daydream

We are indeed.

The Team That Picks Together Stays Together

We all gained a mega-appreciation for our super-skilled vineyard staff today. It took us 1.5 hours to pick 1.5 tons of grapes. According to Manuel, our Director of Facilities, in 1.5 hours, the vineyard crew of 16 guys will pick 8 tons to our 1.5. And we were 30 strong out there today. We’ll have to get a video of the vineyard crew doing their thing. It’s mesmerizing the way their fingers fly through the vines while the voluptuous grape clusters go thunk thunk thunk in their bins. Today my grape clusters went thunk…[30 seconds later]…thunk… It’s hard to get your little blade through all the intertwined leaves and vines to make a quick, efficient slice at the hidden juncture where the cluster grows, and then move on without missing a beat. For us amateurs, it was a lot of bending over, squatting down, feeling and fumbling and fighting with the vine to get to the stem of the cluster only then to try to untangle it from the vines it has grown around. The pros in the vineyard practically keep a steady walk as they pick. I don’t know how they do it.

Next week, we will begin bringing in the bulk of our fruit, and it is going to be crazy. I’m running out the door to go pour at a wine and food event in San Francisco, so more updates will have to wait until next week. I wish everyone at least one delicious and memorable wine experience over the weekend!

Cheers!

britt.

Employee Pick Participants, 1.5 hours and only 1.5 tons later...

All Whites Are In, Reds Begin

Yesterday, we processed the last of our Chardonnay. All of our white grapes, both Sauvignon Blanc and Chard., have now been plucked from their vines and have begun their journey to becoming delicious white wine. 

The last of the Peju Chardonnay waiting to be 'crushed'  (ever-so-gently)

The first bit of Sauvignon Blanc that we picked on September 6 and inoculated on September 9, allowing a few days for the lees to settle out, is dry! (‘Dry’ in winemaking means that all of the sugar in what was once juice has been converted to alcohol in what is now wine. In wines with what we call ‘residual sugar’, not all of the sugar was converted to alcohol, and the wine remains ‘off-dry’ or slightly sweet. There are a number of reasons that this will occur, some intentional, some not…) With much of our Sauv. Blanc dry, this means that technically, we have 2011 wine! 

But it’s not quite finished wine. It’s baby wine. Born and alive, tangible and functional, but so fresh off the boat (out of the womb/off the vine and the lees) that it hasn’t really come into itself yet. Foregoing a discussion (monologue) on nature and nurture, suffice it to say that wine and humans make for amusingly comparable subjects for consideration. The point is that you take what ‘God/Nature/Insert-Name-Here gave you’ and then you take advantage of what Life throws your way. You try to cultivate your best self and you enjoy pondering how you got to be that way. Wine lacks the ability to introspect, of course, so we have to ponder its constitution for it. 

Our 2011 Sauvignon Blanc has been born tasty, bright, and fresh. Soon a small percentage will hang out in neutral oak barrels for complexity, flavor, mouthfeel and structure. Then it will be time for Sara to work her magic, blending from the different tanks of S.B. separated by vineyard blocks and ripeness-levels-at-crush, to create what we are proud to call Peju Sauvignon Blanc. Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but it really is delicious! J

The first Zin to come in (hill-side vineyard block :. less water retention in the soil) 

Oh, and also, we brought in our first red grapes on Friday, which was very exciting, as it has been a long time coming.  The reds still aren’t quite there yet, however, in terms of ripeness. And the rain yesterday and today has everyone feeling a little nervous. As long as we get sun after the rain though, all should be well. Friday, we brought in the little bit of Malbec and Petit Verdot from our Rutherford property. Yesterday, it was Zinfandel grapes from the Persephone Vineyard. Friday, I’ll be working crush with the crew so stay tuned! Can’t wait!

britt.

Pablo, Lony, Juanito & Frankie wave 'Hello!' from the sorting table

Harvest Interns arrive from Chile! and get put straight to work in the lab.

Lony & Pablo Measuring Grape Samples for Ripeness

Our long-awaited harvest interns arrived this week! Lony and Pablo are a young couple from Chile pursuing careers-slash-lives in Winemaking and Agrobusiness at the Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco. Funny how as an American, I automatically assume one’s ‘career’ and one’s ‘life’ are so inseparably connected. I look forward to getting to know Lony and Pablo and to trying to get a sense of how they view the importance of their ‘careers’ in their lives, what they hope to do with winemaking, and what winemaking means to them. Winemaking is such a rich field in which to pursue one’s ‘Career’ because it attracts people from so many different countries and cultures and experiences for some of the same, few, basic reasons.

Anyway, Lony and Pablo have migrated up to the Northern Hemisphere to work their second harvest of the year.  Another reason pursuing winemaking is so awesome is that it allows you (pretty much requires you) to move back and forth between hemispheres while learning the craft so as to maximize your number of harvest experiences in one year.  I’ll have to ask L & P how the 2011 harvest was in Chile this year, and how they feel about Californian wine! So much fun to talk with Wine People (yes, we are a People) of different countries about what they think of Californian wine, how our style differs from their winemaking traditions, and how the two may or may not be converging as with everything else in this globalizing world...

Squished Grape Samples from EVERY Vineyard Block We Have!

So today, they weighed grapes, noted the color of the ‘pips’ for ripeness (pips = the seeds in the grape berry, and they go from light green to brown as the berries ripen), and measured the sugar content, total acidity, and pH of the berries to see how close they are for the pickin’. Not terribly close apparently. But we’re hoping to bring in our first bit of Chardonnay tomorrow, and our first reds next week! Stay tuned!

britt.

Ariana Peju works Harvest 2011!

Ariana Peju's First Yeast Inoculation!

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This year, Ariana, youngest of the two Peju daughters and a Proprietor of the company, will be spending two days per week with the Production team working harvest! Last year, it was big sister Lisa who tried her hand at the production side of the business. Now it’s Ariana’s turn to sort grapes, operate pumps, maneuver heavy hoses, sanitize equipment, pump-over the fermenting fruit, and perform all the other simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating harvest-time tasks. Today, she did her first yeast inoculation. From the puff-factor of the foam, we can see she made these yeast very happy.

Here's a quick summary of yeast inoculation: Yeast are delivered to us in dormant, powder form. By adding yeast to just the right amount of water at just the right temperature (between 100 and 106 degrees Fahrenheit), we wake them from their dormant state. At this point, little by little, we add grape juice from the tank they will be pitched into once they reach a close-enough temperature. (Remember, the yeast started at ~103 degrees, and the juice in the tank is around 55 for reds and colder for whites.) As the yeast start metabolizing the sugar in the juice, they become ‘happy’ (very technical winemaking term) and expand. Happy yeast mean a smoother fermentation process with less opportunity for unwanted organisms to find their way in. Ariana’s yeast are looking very happy! Congrats, Ariana, on a successful first inoculation!

It’s Gettin’ Hot Out Here, So Take Off All Your...

...nice clothes, put on your old rags and get ready to get pickin'!  

It’s been hot for 3 days now.  For a long time it was chilly or at least mildly cool in the mornings, hot around noon, and then cool again already by the time work let out in the early evening. For about a week before this current hot spell, it was incontrovertibly cold. A friend and I spoke about how we were suddenly starting to feel the hibernating instinct coming on, and begrudgingly so, as neither of us felt we had suffered nearly enough of what was supposed to be Napa Valley summers’ insufferable heat.

But things are heating up again. Joe, our assistant winemaker, was talking today about the ‘tsunami’ of grapes he was sure would be coming soon. (Tsunami here referring to a relatively fortunate natural ‘onslaught’/inpouring of ripe grapes, for which ultimately we are grateful, however chaotic and stressful it might feel in the moment. N.B. I wish to express my sincere compassion for those that recently suffered the catastrophic tsunami of wind, water, and destruction in Japan.)

So anyway, the point is it might get crazy around here soon if it stays hot and all the grapes ripen at the same time. Stay tuned. Let’s just hope the heat doesn’t spike so suddenly that we lose more crop in addition to what was lost in late spring rains. There could be a wine drought!!  Just kidding, don’t panic yet. I’ll keep you posted. And anyway, we’re Americans. We’re problem solvers and innovative thinkers. We always find a way to get what we want!

britt

Good Morning

Usually it’s the aromatic experience of rich, toasty coffee that invites me to join the rest of the world in morning’s wakeful activity. Today, just now, it was the smell of freshly fermenting Sauvignon Blanc that met me as I shuffled into the office after another night of somewhat un-ideal sleep. Deliciously, delicately pungent, it has got to be one of the most beautiful smells in the world. Floral and elegant and enticing, it’s as though nature were creating its own perfume. I hope everyone gets to have/pursues this experience at some point in his or her life. (And why wait?) Sometimes it’s hard for me not to criticize the whole working-in-an-office thing and accompanying sedentary lifestyle that I've led since last harvest—I came out here for winemaking- how did I end up doing Marketing?—but today, it’s hard for me not to appreciate my uncommon and highly agreeable position to be working just a staircase away from the fragrant magic (and science) happening in our cellar of fermenting fruit. 

(And anyway, I get to work Harvest again for a few days a week, so don't get me wrong, I'm pretty stoked about life.)

britt.

Pre-Harvest Buzz, About the Author, and Nature is Awesome

From 8/12/11

Wine country is about to erupt into hyperactivity.

It is hard to appreciate in this pre-Harvest moment of calm, collected normalcy just how much is about to happen in the next three months, especially after such a mild, gradual summer/growing season.  This will be my second harvest in the Napa Valley and probably really the second harvest I’ve even known was happening as such. I don’t think I really understood the concept of a harvest until I studied abroad in Senegal in college and spent enough time living outside in a village to be transformed by the experience of living in a way connected to nature.

I grew up in a city. We moved to the country when I was nine, but it was horse country. (Phoenix, Maryland.) Nobody was growing much of anything besides the grass on their front lawn, and mowing was the only tending involved. My parents are well educated people and caring and attentive parents who fed me well and raised me to value being healthy and conscientious about things in general, but still somehow I had no idea how my vegetables came to be. I never actually witnessed a growth cycle of anything non-human. I had no appreciation for how things grew or what it was like to spend quality time outside and with nature.

I know that’s why I appreciate it that much more now. It was like discovering a whole new level of being, to exist in connection to the earth rather than apart from it, floating in isolation- a weird, individual black box of a human sharing space and time with everything around me, but existing separately. Nature grows from the deep and from itself. There’s no start point or end point, no delimitation of existence. It’s all interconnected, and when you tap into it, spend time with it and begin to be able to actually feel the connection, to feel the way that you too are in fact a part of everything that’s going on… well, it’s awesome. The true meaning of that word.

So that’s me. Probably more than I’ll share throughout this blog. But in case you ever wonder who is this person behind the author, here’s a sense! Hello!

britt.