Date: September 11, 2009 @ 8:41 AM

Dry Ice

Our Harvest started Friday. We picked Napa Valley Chardonnay for Far Niente and Russian River Pinot Noir for EnRoute.

This is the one time of year that we use dry ice. In case you don't remember, dry ice is not the type of ice required for James Bond-style martinis (very dry…shaken not stirred). It is ice made out of frozen CO₂. (I assume it is dry ice because it has no water...Wikipedia might set me straight.)

Yes, dry ice has a use in today’s winemaking. It used to be encountered for shipping cold stuff like ice cream...back in the day.  Now, we use it as a source of… you guessed it…CO₂ which offers protection against oxygen.

Do you remember the first time you got to use dry ice? I do. I was about seven and it was GREAT! It was like having magic cubes because it bubbled and smoked when dropped into water. (At seven, you just know that your parents’ friends haven't ever been served a bubbling and smoking gin and tonic with the smoke sliding down off its rim - is that cool or what? Of course, we might have stopped to think about the reaction of my aunt arriving in the powder room to be confronted by a smoking toilet! Do we ever get past bathroom humor?)

No, we aren't using dry ice for special effects at the winery even though we have plenty of toilets... Instead, we toss a couple of scoops of dry ice bits into a webbed sack and hang it inside the tank as we fill it with grapes. The dry ice slowly sublimates (sublimate, isn’t that a great word?) and keeps the surface of the grapes protected under a blanket of inert gas. It happens to work really well and looks great.

Just don’t ever touch dry ice with your bare hands as it is cold enough to burn you. (Classic oxymoron.)