Vino In My Dino

Scents & Memories

September 24, 2018 16:10

Scents & Memories

If you have been reading my posts for a while you’ll remember my favorite season is fall and the best aroma this time of year is the smell of fermentation. When I arrive at my office and get out of the car I am welcomed with the sharp and wonderful smell of grapes fermenting away in the cellar. This is an olfactory memory scent which takes me back to when I was a little girl growing up here. It is literally like coming home for me once fall and harvest begin.

It brings back memories of making 'wine' from just picked wine grapes by squeezing them into plastic wine glasses which came with our play china set. I am certain it all became a sticky mess and my mom likely cleaned it up. We made 'vine houses' of the huge head-pruned French Colombard vines by claiming one of our own (I have three sisters by the way, all younger than me) and creating our own vine village using the canopy for the 'roof'. The time my sister Lisa, who was about 6 years old, walked across the sump and fell into the just-pressed wine. She was find and later on my uncle John labeled up a bottle of "Mountain Lisa" to commemorate the occasion. We would pick our own grapes and bringing them in to be weighed-pretty sure it was all of 20 pounds of second crop Zinfandel but we were so happy to do it-nothing back breaking like today's grape pickers!

We wanted to be a part of the process that absorbed my dad and uncles' time especially since our house was right in the middle of the operation. The home was surrounded by winery buildings which were built as needed during the growth years of the winery. Today it is World Headquarters for J. Pedroncelli Inc-and my office is my old bedroom I shared with my sister Joanna. So many memories! Bee stings, scraped knees, muddy shoes, learning to ride a bike in pea gravel (try it sometime), digging around the old stuff left by my grandfather in the attic of the winery, finding where the latest kittens were born and trying to tame them-I even climbed up on top of a wine tank to get to them and I am afraid of heights and I had more of a problem getting down however, picking fruit and vegetables from our large garden, canning with my grandmother Virginia, drying walnuts and then helping to clean them, watching my mom prepare abalone that was caught by my uncle Al and getting to eat what is now a delicacy. All of these tie me back to my childhood growing up a Dry Creek girl.

A toast to memories of harvests past, the current one ongoing and knowing there'll be more as we continue on to the next generations.

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