Sonoma Harvest: My Own Grapes of Wrath

The rows of manicured green vines stretched to the horizon, over the far hills and perhaps beyond. 

The afternoon was sweltering — over 100 degrees and humid at the start of the long Labor Day weekend. 

It was a day to drink wine not make it. 

But it was also the height of harvest season on the five-acre spread run by my friends Sam and Dave, two San Diego-born brothers turned gentleman farmers and vintners at their Porte Cochere vineyards in Northern California’s verdant Russian River Valley. 

The grapes were impatient. They were ready to begin the process of turning well-watered fruit into wine. With the unseasonably hot weather and collective heat from the surrounding forest fires, they seemed to say, “Pick me now. Delay at your own peril.”

Days before, a team of itinerant professional pickers had moved in with the mammoth kleig lights that allowed them to work in the dark. 

They started at 10:30 p.m., a dozen men perhaps, all speaking Spanish, disembodied voices emanating from the shadows just beyond the reach of the big lights and their whirring motors. 

By 3 a.m. they were finished, the vines pretty much picked clean, as though a horde of locusts had set in on the field, devouring everything in its path. 

Well, maybe not everything. 

I was a member of the B-Team, among a handful of friends who had volunteered to work through the rows one more time, scouting out the last remaining bunches of sweet white grapes that the professionals had overlooked.

There were seven of us that day, including Sam and Dave, each armed with work gloves, a pair of handheld clippers and a large white plastic bucket to collect our harvest.

So far, the pros had picked nearly 18,000 pounds of grapes, down from 22,000 the year before. We set our sites on collecting perhaps a quarter-ton more. 

Our reward would greatly outweigh our labors. After only a short time in the sun, our gracious hosts would lay out a spread of fresh food, much of it organic, picked from their home garden, not to mention wine — theirs and that of others — pulled from their collection. 

At that back porch setting, the vines lying just over the pool, your plate didn’t stay un-replenished for long and your wine glass was never empty. 

But as I ventured out into the rows, my baseball cap already wet with sweat, I realized that what truly awaited me in those fields were my own grapes of wrath. 

My wife, bless her braggadocio little soul, loves this kind of work. As an accountant, she insists, she has an eye for detail, something I lacked as a buffoonish writer. 

She likes nothing better than to walk into some Home Depot screw aisle and spend an hour finding just the right part, while I too quickly become bored and restless.

As she tells it, she can see things I cannot even fathom, and that includes the last bunches of grapes taking refuge under the thick vineyard foliage. 

She would easily out-pick me, she predicted. Her wine glass, not to mention her white grape collection barrel, would overflow, while mine would remain sad, pathetic and empty. 

And so I waded into all that greenery with the singular intent to set this woman straight. 

A Lou Reed song played on Sam’s backyard sound system and strains of “Sweet Jane” flowed into the vineyard. 

It seemed fitting.

The fertile Russian River Valley is renowned for its Pinot Noir grapes, the little white gems of sweetness that were now being collected in little bundles by our small brigade of pickers.

We were each assigned a row with our clippers and buckets. Dave gave me a quick rundown of the strategy. 

Search out the bigger grape clusters that the professionals passed by. Don’t bother with little clumps of four or five grapes. Keep your eyes open. The pros missed them for a reason: they were particularly well concealed. 

And don’t pick anything up off the ground. 

My Beijing-born wife, like the rest of her Chinese friends there in the growing fields, wore a wide-brimmed hat designed to block out each and all of the sun’s damaging rays.

In Asian culture, the sun is the enemy, especially for women. Tans and darker skin do not denote good health and leisure like they do in the west. Instead, they imply that the wearer is a peasant, a farmer who spends his or her days toiling in the fields. That’s why you see city types like my wife walking the street under umbrellas on a sunny summer day. 

Sam joked that these women in their wide colorful hats reminded him of female fashion at the Kentucky Derby, which was being run that very afternoon. 

I got started. I walked down the row of vines like a shopper in search of a rare ingredient in the grocery store spice aisle. 

I knew it was there somewhere. I just didn’t know where.

While I spotted numerous small clusters of grapes, I’d been told these weren’t worth my time. Halfway down that first row, my bucket stood empty. 

From the next row, I heard my wife’s question. 

“What’s wrong?” she said “Glass eye bothering you again?”

She had turned one of my favorite heckles back against me. Years ago, I had teased her mother while she and my father-in-law helped paint our kitchen.

Whenever I spotted a rough patch of paint I would joke that Mama was doing a great job, considering the fact that she had a glass eye.

For my wife, this was indeed sweet revenge. Mr. Big Mouth tripped up by his own wise-guy tongue. 

Suddenly, I began to panic. The sun beat down. Sweat stung my eyes. 

Vultures circled. 

Where were these goddamned grapes? It's like needed night vision glasses to spot these little creeps amid their camouflage. 

I pulled aside clumps of green foliage, bent over to peer below the wires that held the vines. 

Nothing.

Finally, I found a few shriveled survivors, by now more raisin than grape, and plopped them into my bucket. 

“Oh, here’s another bunch!” my wife cried in delight from her adjoining row. "Look! They’re so beautiful!”

There was more indignity to come. 

Suddenly, my wife had finished her row and was now starting down mine, even though I assured her it had already been well-scoured. 

Right away, she produced a couple of fat bunches from ground I had just covered, like a magician pulling rabbits and coins out of thin air.

I scoffed, assuring her that my yield was already far greater than hers.

“Let me see your bucket,” she said. 

I walked over. Luckily, she was leaning over to grasp her latest prize. Her booty left unattended, I quickly swiped some bunches from her bucket to help even the score. 

Moments later, she looked inside my pail.

“Not bad,” she said. “I’m actually surprised.”

I felt sheepish.

While I’m no thief if hearts, I had to admit that I was a thief of grapes. 

My wife only smiled. 

Then she pointed to grape bunches within my grasp.

“Look!” she said. “There’s one for you.”

She gave a soft and lovely laugh that told me she understood me. It was OK I was a lousy grape picker. 

She would help me. 

It was such a sweet reaction, one that melted not only my heart but my glass eye as well.