Warning: self-promotion ahead.


Dear People in The Business,

I am seriously considering the wine business as a future career, and I'm looking for a summer job in the business. I feel that with my chemical engineering background I'd be most suited to wine analysis/enology, but I'm open to other aspects of the industry.

Relevant courses I have taken include:

* Biochemical engineering - mostly bioreactors and pharmaceutical techniques, but they use fermenters too!
* Bioinspired materials - the future of high tech!
* Reactor engineering
* Biochemistry
* Bioseparations - I can scale up your reverse-osmosis contraption of choice (and I won't tell anyone!). I can also scale down a fermenter, so you can run meaningful experiments at low volumes (it's not as simple as it sounds).
* Wine appreciation - ok, not a class, but I've learned a lot. For instance, I know how to use sulfites to specifically increase glycerine production.

Princeton is not famed for its enology department, but I know my fundamentals, and can learn quickly, as well as bring some new ideas to the table.

Books I have read that have inspired me include:

* Peynaud, The Taste of Wine.
* Broadbent, Wine Tasting
* Johnson, The World Atlas of Wine
* Barry Smith (ed.), Questions of Taste: the Philosophy of Wine
* Parker, Bordeaux, WBG, Rhone

Relevant work experience:


* Computational and experimental genomics projects with S. Cerevisiae (Professor Olga Troyanskaya, Princeton University)
* Protein engineering with E. Coli (Professor Jamie Link, Princeton University)
* President and founder, Princeton Wine Tasting Club (70+ members and 6 events since September '07).
* Sales associate, Teuscher's Chocolates, Stanford CA

I am especially interested in California companies since my home is near Stanford. I can be reached at ayyangar [at] princeton [dot] edu.

Peace and health,
Rajiv

President and Founder, Princeton Wine-Tasting Club

P.S: Princeton has no enology department, just to be clear.

Can you do the following?:

Lift over 60 pounds, 100+ times per day is best. 105 pounds is better (empty barrel).

Speak Spanish.

Drive a forklift.

Clean things.

quote:

Originally posted by Stefania Wine:
Can you do the following?:

Lift over 60 pounds, 100+ times per day is best. 105 pounds is better (empty barrel).

Speak Spanish.

Drive a forklift.

Clean things.

Glamorous

My Monday review is worth reposting:

Monday turned into a long day also. Visit the new vineyard site from 8-10. Whacked one gopher.

You know what winegrowers talk about when they get together? Killing gophers. We keep a count, it's like kill marks on a fighter plane. "How many did you get?." "I got 14." "I got 7." Everyone keeps an up to date count, plus a vintage history. "I got 11 this year, but nothing like 05 I got 104 that year."

Glamour of the wine life.

I meet with our Bay Area sales reps for lunch and did barrel samples for them. Good kids. They seem so young.

The crew had a spat and I had to go back on site after lunch. Daniel was filling the post holes with too much water and Millie was mad about working in mud. Spanish translation problem. Last week I backed the forklift around the truck to unload it, and Jerry had said he'd turn the truck around. My Spanish isn't good enough to tell the difference between "go around the truck" and "turn around the truck". Daniel's English wasn't good enough to tell the difference between 'put water in the holes' and 'fill the holes'.

Everyone made up though and they have 5 of the 34 rows complete.

Total wine stuff including driving: 10 hours.

quote:

Originally posted by Stefania Wine:
Can you do the following?:

Lift over 60 pounds, 100+ times per day is best. 105 pounds is better (empty barrel).

Speak Spanish.

Drive a forklift.

Clean things.

Yes I can lift stuff. I break dance and rock climb.

My spanish is a little rusty, but I aced the AP Exam back in high school, so I'm sure it would come back. Example:

Wine pourer: "Quisieras degustar este vino?"
Me: "SiMON!"

I can drive a car. I'm sure I could learn to drive a forklift.

I can also clean things.

My question: Would I still have work to do if the harvest hasn't come yet? I gotta be back in school by early September.

I for one love this kid. If I were ITB, I would give him a job.

I remember going down this path before. I spent a summer picking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, cleaning floors, manning phones, and playing in dirt for an up-and-coming winery.

It's a hell of an experience, but a backbreaking one. Regardless of what happens, I can guarantee that you'll walk out of whatever internship you get either knowing that you're born for winemaking or that it's something you'll never be able to do.

Good luck. You sound like you'll last a lot longer than I did

Summer is finishing up in the vineyard. Green pruning, last of the weed removal and spraying. Usually we're done with sulfur by then (thank god) so it's Stylet Oil mostly and lots of inspection since mildew pressure will be high. Around the end of July we start prepairing for bird netting. Get the weeds down, hedge up the vines and remove unwanted clusters.

Then netting goes on. This is the worst job of anything in the wine world. It's hot, hard, and dirty. Mice and rats live in the nets all winter, they are covered with dust, and you put them up usually when it's in the 90's outside. It tangles in everything and you can't wear a hat while you do it.

Most people bottle in late summer. It's pure assembly line work. If you are bigger, you'll lift cases, otherwise you'll pack bottles. Driving the forklift goes to the most senior person.

There is some prep of the wine, but it's minor. Sulfur additions and analysis of any problems. Most people outsource this at smaller wineries, at least the analysis. It's probably a 1 x 100 ratio. For every hour spent on analysis, there is 100 spent packing bottles.

It's also a time to rack the bigger tannin wines and add sulfur to them. Again a 100 to 1 ratio. For every hour spent checking sulfur levels, there are 100 spent with a hose.

Then everyone goes on vacation.

Your best bet for a pure chemist internship is to look in the central valley at one of the big tank farms, or maybe at Vinquiry. Most people just don't have enough work to keep a chemist employed for more than a couple hours a week, they need strong backs and willing hands.

Oh and PS you're welcome to hang out with me. You can see the Stanford tower from the front of the winery and I've got 3 vineyards within 5 minutes of the campus. The owner of one of them is even a Princton Grad.

I'm paying my crew $12.50 an hour.

Wow! That sounds brutal!

Not quite what I'm looking for (as you may have guessed), but I'd definitely like to hang out some time!

I live so close to so many wineries, but I've never been to any of them, since I only became interested in college.

-Rajiv

quote:

Originally posted by barrelmonkey:
Not quite what I'm looking for (as you may have guessed)...

KID, the biggest mistake you could make, in the wine career that you don't yet have, is to pass up any offer from Paul Romero / Stefania Wine.

quote:

Not quite what I'm looking for (as you may have guessed), but I'd definitely like to hang out some time!

LOL

"Hang out sometime" That's funny. Beats working in the summer - I agree.

"Aren't there any jobs where I can just pour some wine, taste and make $60,000 or so...Starting at the bottom of course" A Ben Milano disciple perhaps?

quote:

I'm paying my crew $12.50 an hour.

Sounds like that pay is seriously beneath a person with his credentials.

1. If you are trying to figure out how to get into the wine business and don't meet, speak and pick Paul's brain, you are a fool.

2. If you are at Princeton, why don't you explore East Coast wineries - there may be more desire for help and less supply.

quote:

Originally posted by Hunter:

quote:

Not quite what I'm looking for (as you may have guessed), but I'd definitely like to hang out some time!

LOL

"Hang out sometime" That's funny. Beats working in the summer - I agree.

"Aren't there any jobs where I can just pour some wine, taste and make $60,000 or so...Starting at the bottom of course" A Ben Milano disciple perhaps?

quote:

I'm paying my crew $12.50 an hour.

Sounds like that pay is seriously beneath a person with his credentials.

Honestly, I don't care that much about the pay. It's the 100:1 ratio I'm worried about. I'm sure I'd learn a lot of practical things on the job, but I really want a position where my technical creativity as a chemical engineer is used, and where I can learn skills I can use later on in my career.

Welcome to the world of internships! I'm in grad school in the top ranked program in the US for my area of study. I completed an internship in December and am about to start another six month position. I fully expect to be mired in drudgery despite any promises from my employer. It's okay. They have 30+ years experience and I'm learning. I need to be humble. What I will do is make a personal goal to achieve a couple objectives of my own.

I get where you want to use your engineering skills. I do. But if you want to work in the wine business and have no experience it would benefit you to learn from the ground up. You have to create relationships and work toward getting to practice more elaborate skills. You could work with the winery to be able to fulfill one smaller engineering objective for yourself and decide if you are really interested in the industry.

quote:

Originally posted by barrelmonkey:
Honestly, I don't care that much about the pay. It's the 100:1 ratio I'm worried about. I'm sure I'd learn a lot of practical things on the job, but I really want a position where my technical creativity as a chemical engineer is used, and where I can learn skills I can use later on in my career.

The medical career is a good and worthy cause =)

quote:

Originally posted by barrelmonkey:
Honestly, I don't care that much about the pay. It's the 100:1 ratio I'm worried about. I'm sure I'd learn a lot of practical things on the job, but I really want a position where my technical creativity as a chemical engineer is used, and where I can learn skills I can use later on in my career.

Think you can make it up to Ontario for a summer?

There's usually a lab tech internship at LCBO Quality Assurance for science students ... it's simple work, measuring acid/tannin/sulphite/alcohol/dangerous compound levels and there's a fair amount of tasting involved.

Keep your eyes open here: www.lcbo.com/careers/index.shtml ...

MM, the LCBO has that damn 'lift 60 pounds' requirement

Seriously Rajiv, here's the best advice I can give you.

Go to grad school, MBA would be best. Make a lot of money. Buy a vineyard and winery. Hire someone to take care of it.

No shame in that route to the wine world, I truely enjoy working with people who have gone that route, and they enjoy working with me.

Sorry for the thread drift, but Paul- what is your means for whacking gophers. I have a couple of acres and they are creating havoc in my lawn. We have tried everything- only thing somewhat successful thus far are the traps that impale the little buggers. they either die a horrible, slow death or I have to pull em out and hit em with the shovel (which I am not too fond of).

By the way- I got 6 last year, how'd you do?

We're putting up owl boxes at some point this year, as soon as we get a slow down. Casey Hartlip swears he's had great luck with them. Other than that, it's trap and smack. I'd rather do that than poison and it's safer with all the dogs I've got running in the vineyards.

Some people swear by gas or noise bombs, I've just got too many neighbors close by to feel comfortable trying either.

Millie does that traping She was over 20 last year. I do the snakes, she does the gophers. I had two, last year. One rattler, and one 5 1/2 foot gopher that was a mistake. Felt terrible about it, but then in 4 foot of dry brush, you don't really pause to figure out exact parentage, you whack. The rattler was a mean little guy. 2 feet, at the age when they bite everything, and was hanging around the front porch and garage at the Elandrich Vineyard.

Yikes- I got one rattler last year- a little 18" er. Shovel appears to be my weapon of choice.

Owl boxes huh? We have owkls so maybe thats a thought..I'll look into it. Thanks and good hunting!

If you can get them to nest, they'll kill between 500-2000 little critters a year to keep their little ones feed. We've got redtails now in every vineyard except Chaine d'Or. That really helps with the birds. Takes a little while, they start out on the doves, which doesn't help you in the vineyard, but as soon as those are gone they move on to the robins and mockingbirds.

Nature is a wonderful self regulator

quote:

Originally posted by Stefania Wine:
and one 5 1/2 foot gopher that was a mistake.

a gopher grows up to 5 and a 1/2 feet ?!?!?!?!??!?!