Post-Harvest Depression

Step 1: ripe grapes on the vine

Back in my ultimate frisbee days, my teammates and I suffered from a serious condition called post-tournment depression. It's that exhausted, nostalgic crash you feel after the event you have aniticipated and worked so hard for has past. You just had an epic weekend of giving your all and feeling the "flow" with your teammates, and suddenly it's over and time to return to life as usual. While these reminiscent blues are a downer, the come down is small price to pay for that pure adrenaline that carried you through the weekend.  And luckily, with sports, there is always another training period and competition to look forward to.  

Step 2: grapes, picked and sorted

Post-harvest depression is a bit more difficult to overcome, especially this year for me. For the first time, I had the privilege of following the viticultural cycle from winter pruning of the vines to their final picking. And by finally working with a vigneron trusting enough and a domaine small enough, I got to try my little, pinot noir stained hands to work at every task, from driving the tractor to rolling barrels to performing lab analysis of the fermenting juice. It was a non-stop two weeks of working from before sunrise to after sunset with sticky grape sugars permanently plastered to my hair. And I loved every minute of it!  

And the most important step of all?  Tasting!

While the sane side of me knows working like this is unsustainable, my heart yearns for it to never end. We had worked tediously all year in the vines, tending to each cep from root to canopy, and suddenly in one crazy week, the fruits of our labor were already resting in tanks and barrels, just waiting for nature to nurture it into wine. In Burgundy, making wine takes at least a year and a half from start to finish, but clearly the most exciting and crucial time is the grapes big move from the big world outside to the cool, closed cellar. As a result, it was a very emotional time for me. As cheesy as it sounds (and is) I felt a special connection with these mature, finally adult grapes. We had both grown up a lot together in the past year. They had endured violent summer storms and thrived under beautiful Burgundy sunshine. I had faced visa complications and language barriers and been enlightened by several mind-altering wines. So during harvest, I just wanted to sample each appelation, sort every bunch with my hands, taste each day as the juice quickly transformed, and really experience every moment. Luckily, I was in the hands of  vigneron who put up with and even encouraged my grape geekiness... because he is just as infatuated with the fruit of the vine.  

I realize now that the lack of emotions I felt on the actual date of my one year anniversary in France were just waiting to explode like the red fermenting juice during piegage. The calendar of the 2011 vintage resonates with me more than my physical arrival in Paris back in August 2010. I am officially a wine nerd now, and I am afraid there is no turning back.