I just got back last night from shooting the wine and cooking show pilot in Paso Robles. Wow, did I have a good time. We shot for two long days at Sylvester winery during the middle of harvest. I couldn’t of paid money to have had the experience that I had this week. I got to ride on top of the machine that picks the grapes by shaking the vine so hard that they fall off. We watched literally tons of grapes being loaded in and dumped into a vat that has a corkscrew that pushed the grapes down a gulley. From there, they are pushed into a huge barrel that presses the grapes and the juice flows out of the bottom. The juice is then piped into these huge steel vats which is where the fermentation process begins. I then helped the winemaker fill some oak barrels with their Merlot for aging. I also had a chance to partake in barrel tastings from the same Cabernet Sauvignon vintage that had been aged in different types of oak barrels from around the world. Surprisingly, the wine tasted quite different from barrel to barrel even though it was the same varietal and vintage. I found this to be very interesting as far as understanding wine because I never realized that the oak could play such a huge role in the end product. There was even a noticeable difference between the wine that had both been aged in French oak barrels but from different barrel makers. I love wine and I think that I have a good understanding of wine, but boy did I learn a lot in these past few days that I would of never of been able to understand without the hands on experience. Making good wine is an art form in and of itself. There is so much that goes into making a bottle of wine that I was unaware of. My trip has just made me appreciate wine that much more.
