The Art of Procrastination in Winemaking
One of the key principles in winemaking is to take your time. Don’t make any snap decisions. If you are not sure about adding something or if the wine may not be ready to bottle, top up, close the barrel, and come back later to start the decision-making process over again. This push of decisions or tasks downstream is called ‘procrastination’ and in most worlds it’s a bad thing. Fortunately for me, it seems to work in my winery.
In June, I found out I had missed a critical step in opening the doors to my winery, Le Garage. This omission resulted in downtime for my winery and gave me the opportunity for some reorganization. During this, I had my shoulder repaired, my garage winery updated (I’m so excited!), and have revisited my business plan. I had procrastinated on writing my Vision, and Guiding Principles (mission statement). It sounds so rudimentary doesn’t it? And yet, these two small steps will help answer my questions throughout the journey, year over year.
There seems to be a natural order of rolling out my winery business plan. The big things that I procrastinated on have come into full view now and during this downtime I have been able to further define my business and take the next big plunge. My Vision is to enjoy, talk about, share, and sell affordable high-quality wine at local farm markets, local events, and at local restaurants. My specialty is dry red wines, and on the fun side are dry white, rosé, and hopefully some sparkling wines.
My Guiding Principles are to nurture each barrel of wine as its own living entity, to share quality wine within the community by the glass or by the bottle at farmers markets, events and at local restaurants. Also, among these principles is to continue my ongoing personal wine education so that I can share productively in wine conversations.
The next question that I am faced with is what grapes am I ordering for fall crush? This sounds easy until I think about where am I going to put this new wine? What wines from last year are going to be bottled? Which wines will be aged and how long? How much wine do I need to bottle and how else can I package my wine to sell as described in my vision? How many barrels will fit in my winery and still leave room for crush and fermentation.
I‘ve been kicking the decision of overall quantity down the road since the beginning because it was too hard to think about up front. The rolling rotation of wine barrels throughout the process is still mind boggling to me. I had decided to never crush more than 12 barrels in one season – so that I can maintain the wine as in my Vision. Bottling a barrel now leaves it open for crush in October, but bottling it in December means I have to leave that barrel empty for a few months. The barrels are happiest with wine in them, so this means barrel maintenance and proper storage.
At the end of the day my decision is this … I’ll empty three barrels into bottles, sixtels for restaurants, and kegs for my new wine kegerator that will be furnishing my wine bus, Ivy. I will order 9 barrels and begin my new-to-retired barrel rotation this year. The grapes as always will include Primitivo, Syrah, Petite Syrah, perhaps Barbera, and I have to think about what other wines sound good. The rest of the decisions I am kicking down the road again. When the decision needs to be made it will surely present itself. There’s nothing better than a glass of wine with a little procrastination!
Photo credit: Kate Freese
