During the harvest, and more especially towards the end, we are all functioning on adrenalin – there is a certain buzz about the place, and every individual is focused on the job in hand, rather like a hive of bees (the word buzz was not intended as a pun). The problem is that the minute that we stop and we have time to go home and relax, we simply end up with a rather deflated feeling and struggle to regain the momentum. This probably has a lot to do with the first task that we face after picking….. to clean the bodega – and let’s face it, nobody really likes cleaning.

If you’ve never been to a wine cellar during harvest the thing that you may not realise is that every surface becomes sticky. The grape juice and pressed grape skins get everywhere, and even into one or two quite inexplicable places! Imagine dropping a bottle of fruit concentrate on your kitchen floor, leaving it for a couple of days to dry a little, and then walking through it into the other rooms of your house. This is more or less what it is like – suffice to say, difficult to clean.

So, we start with the vehicles first, then the grape reception on the upper level of the cellar and work downwards from there. One of the most horrible jobs is cleaning the presses, and the only real way to do this is to climb inside, which is not an enviable task for the person that has to do it. Finally, when the building is clean, there is the small matter of pressure washing about 2,000 plastic cases that we use for collecting the grapes. Whilst these are cleaned during the harvest as they are re-used over and over again, we always give them one major deep clean before they are put into storage for next year. To be done properly takes three people a few days to complete.

Of course, running simultaneously to this, we have the most important work of all – making our wine, but that is another story that I will cover in the coming days.

During the harvest, and more especially towards the end, we are all functioning on adrenalin – there is a certain buzz about the place, and every individual is focused on the job in hand, rather like a hive of bees (the word buzz was not intended as a pun). The problem is that the minute that we stop and we have time to go home and relax, we simply end up with a rather deflated feeling and struggle to regain the momentum. This probably has a lot to do with the first task that we face after picking….. to clean the bodega – and let’s face it, nobody really likes cleaning.

If you’ve never been to a wine cellar during harvest the thing that you may not realise is that every surface becomes sticky. The grape juice and pressed grape skins get everywhere, and even into one or two quite inexplicable places! Imagine dropping a bottle of fruit concentrate on your kitchen floor, leaving it for a couple of days to dry a little, and then walking through it into the other rooms of your house. This is more or less what it is like – suffice to say, difficult to clean.

So, we start with the vehicles first, then the grape reception on the upper level of the cellar and work downwards from there. One of the most horrible jobs is cleaning the presses, and the only real way to do this is to climb inside, which is not an enviable task for the person that has to do it. Finally, when the building is clean, there is the small matter of pressure washing about 2,000 plastic cases that we use for collecting the grapes. Whilst these are cleaned during the harvest as they are re-used over and over again, we always give them one major deep clean before they are put into storage for next year. To be done properly takes three people a few days to complete.

Of course, running simultaneously to this, we have the most important work of all – making our wine, but that is another story that I will cover in the coming days.