We’ve entered the time of year when other people become football widows and I become a wine widow. It’s harvest season, and Rob is spending long days at City Winery during crush. Actually that should be Crush, since it is all consuming. Once the grapes start coming in, the wine owns his time.
Now, City Winery is different from the other wineries that Rob has worked for in two main ways. 1. It’s in the middle of a major city. 2. The grapes come from far away. He gets in grapes from California, Oregon, Washington, and in the spring Chile. The combination of these two things means that Crush is much longer, since the harvests for each of these locations is at a slightly different time.
Usually the vineyard and the winery are close to each other and all the fruit comes in at once. For City Winery, Crush goes from being a month long madhouse of sixteen hour days, to two and a half months with scattered fourteen hour days but no days off. At all. Once fruit starts fermenting, it needs to be constantly tended until it goes into barrel.
For me, this means seeing him for a few exhausted hours in the evening (In the morning, he leaves before dawn); noting that his beard has gone almost completely white — he doesn’t have one the rest of the year; and trying to make sure that he’s remembering to eat regularly.
So… wine widow. I don’t mind. He has to put up with being a word widower for me.
I’m working above his old NYC City Winery digs these days
Do you guys ever get to take a long vacation, just the two of you? The more I hear about your schedule & his, the more I want that for you both.
Of course, I also want to taste his wine and read your books, so…
Ah, the crush. I’d envy him, but … well, no, I do envy him. But I also sympathize. 🙂
My wife is about to become a postseason-baseball widow. During the regular season, there are times that we don’t see each other from Sunday night to Thursday evening, and October will be worse.
I love the no shave during crush tradition. Please be sure to post an after photo. At least you can see him from the CW dining room… Long live the FYB’s
At least there’s a yummy product at the end of that. With sitting on the couch and watching football, not so much.