This is it, I am leaving (for the weekend)

The red wines have been pressed and barreled, tucked in to bed for the winter in our cellar. The Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay continue to ferment upstairs in two stainless steel tanks and a couple of dozen barrels.

The harvest equipment has been disassembled, cleaned and stored; the tanks have been scrubbed and sanitized; the winery has been washed from top to bottom and reorganized just in time for the all the holiday parties we have booked.

Simply stated - the crush is over. One can't point to a specific moment when harvest is formally completed: for some it is when the last lot is pressed; for others it is when the last wine has been barreled; for myself it is when I can comfortably take a whole weekend off. Yet for everyone who works a harvest whether head wine maker or humble cellar rat, a moment comes when the vintage moves from present tasks to past events and one casts one's attention forward. For the wine making crew this is a moment of both relief and reflection. The frantic pace of harvest work has eased and we now have time to assess the vintage, taste our various lots barrel by barrel, and consider refinements for next year. At most facilities, we would now be setting up to bottle wines from the previous vintage but since this is our first year at City Winery, we have a short winter reprieve. There is still plenty to do of course. We are evaluating our vinification process, our equipment, and our facility to improve the next vintage. We are assessing our cellar regimen and our 2008 grape sources and we invite our barrel members' feedback as we consider vineyard options for 2009. So if you have any input or want to see your favorite grower's grapes here next season, we're all ears. We're also currently planning for our spring crush of southern hemisphere fruit. This is an enterprise very few wineries anywhere in the world have the chance to undertake. It presents a wonderful opportunity to diversify our selection of wine and to learn a great deal from a wine maker's perspective. Normally you have only one chance a year to make wine and with each vintage come new challenges but also learning opportunities. Every vintage is an education. Professionally speaking, the opportunities presented by a spring harvest are quite tantalizing. So even though we'll have to uncover the press, assemble the sorting table and conveyors, and make another BIG mess for a few weeks, we can hardly wait for our South American fruit this spring.

Earlier I used the term "cellar rat". You may be wondering what a cellar rat is. First off: no, it does NOT refer to actual rats. "Cellar rat" is an affectionate term applied to the seasonal workers that every winery hires during the busy months of harvest. Generally they work long hard hours for modest pay. They are nearly always soggy and cold but somehow they always seem to be in good cheer. This year we were most fortunate to stumble across a gentleman named Gary Thomas. Gary's professional background is about as remote from the wine biz as one can get. His career has largely been in the financial services industry but this autumn he answered an ad for a single day of work during one of our first crush days and remained with City Winery for the entire harvest. Despite his unfamiliarity with cellar work and the often physically demanding labor (barrels weigh around 125 pounds empty and we have nearly 300 of them to move about) Gary was invariably cheery and cordial even on the roughest days - and we had a few very rough days. Basically, Gary is just a great all around guy. We were lucky to find him and wish him well in all his endeavors. Thanks Gary and good luck.

David Lecomte / Robert Kowal