My name's David Mahaffey and I'm the winemaker
and grape grower for a wine called Olivia Brion: pinot noir and chardonnay.
I like to be involved in the whole process
and in grape growing I like to start with planting the vines
nurturing them, harvesting the fruits
seeing the fruit fermentation, developing
a brand and a story around the wine that I make, and then eventually
delivering it to the restaurant and seeing people enjoy it in a restaurant meal.
"This one has got well, let me..."
"I won't put any words in your mouth. Why don't you taste it first?"
So, we're working on kind of the upper tier of wine making.
This is not the kind of wine that you'd find
for ten dollars in a supermarket. This is the kind of wine that would be
sixty five or seventy dollars in a nice restaurant.
So we're trying to make something
that's not just pinot noir but it's pinot noir from a place.
Our approach is to be as natural in our farming as possible.
I like to think of myself as a steward to the soil
and I feed the soil in the soil feeds the vine.
Well, one of the interesting things about our work up here
is that because we're out by ourselves
there is a a lotta critters who would like to help themselves to some of this
very tasty ripe fruit.
Several species of birds in fact this mountain range
that we're on the top of is a major flyway for several
migrating bird species and they stop and they're hungry this time of the year.
So, we use bird netting,
covering the vines entirely to physically keep them excluded.
We also have an electronic bird call device that sounds like a
distressed bird to try to scare them away.
We also have a propane cannon up there that
explodes makes a big sound about every 15 minutes and that sound
uh scares them away as well.
"This task that we're doing right now"
"called punch down is just to get the skins back down into the wine so that we"
"can extract all of the color"
"during the fermentation,"
"because all the color in red wine comes out of the skins"
"not the juice in the berry."
"This fermentor over here is"
"fermenting at a faster rate."
"We can indicate that by simply by the temperature"
It's an exothermic reaction, meaning that it gives off heat as it goes.
That one was at 67 and this one is only at 62.
So this one is not giving off as much heat, hence it's not fermenting quite so rapidly.
As a winemaker I need to know
how much sugar is in each one of these beautiful little grapes
and how the yeast will go about converting that sugar into alcohol.
I can't have too much sugar in the process or I'll have too much alcohol which might
in fact, stop the whole process.
So I need to know about simple chemistry
and sometimes a little bit more advanced chemistry.
The most difficult job
in this business is the developing of the story.
How does your wine fit a particular special
niche that somebody is going to be interested in that differentiates it?
That that means that it's different than everybody else's product.
So, brand-building,
marketing, telling the story,
being willing to tell the story again and again.
And understanding how your wine is in fact different and
why it's worth the money that you're asking for it.
Most of the people on the go to
study winemaking will go two of the universities is in California -
uh, University of California, Davis, or University of California, Fresno,
where you can take a degree in fermentation science and even a master's degree beyond that.
There are several of the junior colleges around that have wonderful programs in
grape growing and winemaking,
Napa Junior College, Santa Rosa Junior College, but more importantly
go help some winery.
uh,
Be involved.
I uh, I always have extra people helping me and love to explain
the process of what's going on.
It is varied work, and it's outside work.
It's work that keeps me moving and so
this is my thirtieth year of making wine and
I really love it.
I really love the physical activity of it.
And the fact that there's a new challenge everyday.