Wine changes year-to-year, so when Cal Poly students begin their annual harvest, they never know what to expect. This year’s harvest season came surprisingly early.
“We get our grapes donated to us each year,” said wine and viticulture senior Bryn Hober. “It’s definitely dependent on the harvest season and how the grapes look when the school year starts.”
The early harvest this year, according to Hober, meant the grapes came in at high sugar levels.
Cal Poly’s Center for Wine and Viticulture offers students opportunities in research, wine production and project ferments, which are small-batch fermentation trials done by students.
The winemaking process is tedious, taking months of laborious tasks on top of the interns having to balance their personal lives and school, with any slip-up possibly ruining the wine, according to Hober.
“We spend as many hours as we can. Whenever we get a new batch of grapes, we’ll come in to help press them, sort them and get them ready to ferment,” Hober said. “I’m excited to see how all the hard work turns out once we finally finish pressing, fermenting and going through the whole process.”
Learning all the different steps is winemaking’s most difficult aspect, according to Hober.
“The grapes don’t wait for anyone,” Hober said.
Interns often wake up at 6 a.m. to head out to the winery. From there, the checklist is long, as they precisely investigate the sugar levels, temperature and pH.
“It’s a lot of logistical things, and for me, I’m not a huge bug person,” Hober said.
Hober said she wanted to get hands-on experience instead of reading a textbook, so she reached out to Winery Manager Jim Shumate.
Students expect the wine to be ready a few months after bottling, when fermentation is considered complete.