“Ninety percent cleaning. When no one's done a harvest, they just think, oh, you do this, and there's a romanticism, and then you get to drink wine. You're out there just getting wet, getting dirty for pretty much the whole time.”
sputnikintelligence.com
Asked what someone who has never worked a harvest would be least prepared for physically, the Cass Winery winemaker answers bluntly.
…I went and visited some winemaker friends in Austria and they're like, asked what you're doing here. And I kind of explained the whole situation. They're like, really? Strauss? Like, that's why you're out here. Like, yeah, because it's just huge over there. And that's all they wear pretty much.
That's so awesome. I've always wondered, like, what's the one thing about working harvest that somebody who's never done it would be completely unprepared for? And I mean, like, physically.
Yeah, 90% cleaning. That's it. Yeah. When no one's done a harvest, they just kind of think like, oh, you do this. And there's a romanticism. And then you get to drink wine. It's, you're out there just getting wet, getting dirty for pretty much the whole time.
You've done enough harvest that I imagine you could tell pretty early when a vintage is going to be, you know, interesting, fascinating, educating, all these things, right? How far into 2026 did you get until you realize what you were dealing with?
That's a hard one because, you know, we've had tough years where you're, it's been a great year and then we're halfway through September and we suddenly get this heat spike that, you know, it's over 100 for 18 days or whatever it was a couple years ago. So it's, it is hard to predict. But this year…
it's like you hear certain things. And of course, we've heard just how early of a harvest this was this year. But Passo, of course, a big place. Everybody's growing something different. So it's interesting to kind of hear how it was out at Cass. Now, you've been there for, you know, over a decade.…