Day 1: Welcome to a Men's Club

I do not deny that the female wine maker exists. From Long Island and NYC alone we are graced with Paola Valverde of Macari, Theresa Dilworth from Comtesse Therese, Alie Shaper of BOE, and Kelly Urbanik is the head winemaker at Bedell Cellars, to name a few... well, to name the few from the Eastern Coast, that is.

Last night was my first evening at City Winery and I was the only female intern labeling the wine - 50 or so cases to be exact. (Not to make it sound like I was a lone labeler, there were 2 guys with me). I'm not sure if there are other ladies who volunteer their time to learn the art of wine making, but I couldn't help but notice that even the machinery is a bit masculine.

For example, the capping machine, you literally hump into. Please stick with me while I try to paint this picture: It's a silver air pressure motor about the size of a medium sewing machine and it's called the GAI (ha!). You place the base of the bottle on your hip and the nose, with the loose metal cap into the opening of the GAI. You gently thrust the bottle with your groin into the machine twice with a quarter clockwise rotation on each in. When you are finished, the metal cap is air tight on the top.

Now, I am not a vulgar person at all, but I couldn't help but notice this. It was one of those beautiful and in-your-face situations that I would be both ignorant and stupid to not take note of. I'm not offended in the least bit and I may be one of the only people in the world who found the humor in this. To others, I'm sure, it is just a fact of life (and yet a mundane task in the process).

The next thing I noticed as I was "dumping" cases of wine onto the table and prepping the caps, was how zen physical labor can be. There are several steps to labelling and when you have one person doing each task the motions take on a kundolini-esque repetition.

Steps include: dumping and prepping caps, capping (the hump motion) and labeling (placing the bottle on the belt which labels one at a time), boxing and stacking. It's all about getting in the groove and once you have your pace set with your team, there is no stopping. It amazed me how I didn't allow myself to get tired. I almost forgot what work could entail... I love this. I really, truly love this.

Next up - bottling. All day.