Thru The Grapewine

Insights from the Podcasting World, Harvest, and German Traditions

• Ute Mitchell • Episode 39

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Ever thought about starting your own podcast but unsure where to begin? Join me, your host, as I journey down memory lane, reflecting on the lessons and experiences of being a podcast host. The episode is filled with words of gratitude for my incredible guests and nuggets of wisdom from my personal journey in my podcasting adventure. 
I also talk about the captivating Harvest season in the Willamette Valley and share a little bit of German wine traditions like the yearly selected wine queen.

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Ute:

Hello again and welcome to the Through the Grapevine podcast. I am your host, Ute Mitchell, and this is episode 39. Hard to believe that we are pushing 40 episodes, isn't it? What a great ride it has been too. I mean, I have had so much fun.

Ute:

At this point, I really would very much like to thank you, my listeners, for being here and listening to the episodes. I really am particularly excited about those who occasionally reach out to me and let me know that an episode really resonated with them or you know something that has been said resonated with them. Nothing beats being contacted by someone who tells you, hey, this person said this on this episode and it really kind of made me rethink some of my own decisions. I mean, how cool is that? I've also had some people actually come up to me in real life and say, hey, you host that podcast, that Through the Grapevine podcast, right, and I'm like, yeah, and they'll go, I'm your fan and I'm going. What? You're my fan, I have fans. I still cannot believe that that's such a concept for me to have fans. Anyway, thank you so much. I really appreciate you all.

Ute:

As you know, we have had amazing guests here on this show lately. We had, you know, Mari Womack from Damsel Cellars. We had, of course Tiquette Bramlett, we had Michelle Seufert, we had Mariam Ahmed, we had Stephanie Franklin. So many awe-inspiring women that I had the pleasure and the honor to interview, because each one of them really brought something special to the episode. They brought their you know vulnerability, their strength. They have this fierce passion for what they're doing. They have this immense kindness. They're so intelligent. So if you are new to the podcast, if you happen to be tuning in for the first time today, first of all, welcome. And, second of all, I do highly recommend that you listen to some of the back episodes listed. You will not be disappointed.

Ute:

Today I do not have a guest and, as a matter of fact, the episode will also be a tad bit shorter, I expect. So bear with me, as we're going to be talking about a few things today. It is actually October 3rd as I record and release this episode. Yes, I have been procrastinating. I am actually recording and releasing this episode in the same day, so it's going to be released a little bit later in the day, and it's just. You know what can I say? It's my passion project. That is not usually my practice A lot of editing and polishing goes into recording a podcast episode. It's actually quite a bit of work, if you you know I'm going to just tell you. I'm going to just tell you what it's like. So when I do have guests, I research them before the episode, of course, and then I send them a list of questions usually about 10 questions so that they can prepare accordingly.

Ute:

Not all podcasters do this. I will let you know there's some that are completely unscripted. The reason I do it is that I really want my guests to know exactly what to expect, and it has helped us at times also to move things along when we started chatting a little too long and too intensely about one specific topic, which has happened. You know, when you're, when you're in conversation, definitely you're going to be kind of trailing off into some direction that you weren't intending to go. So that is where the questions come in. I can kind of guide it back into the interview and move the interview forward. So I don't, you know, have this interview going for hours. I don't want anybody to have to listen to an interview for, you know, two hours or whatever. I try to stay between 30 and 45 minutes. That seems to kind of be the sweet spot, and that is working out really well.

Ute:

Now, if you're a beginning podcaster and the reason I'm even bringing this up is I know that recently somebody popped up in my Instagram and started following me, who is starting a wine podcast here in October and so, who knows, maybe they're listening in about. You know what I have to offer in my podcast. So if that is you, I am sure you're asking yourself some of these same questions right now. How do I do this? Do I go scripted, unscripted? Do I do it solo with a partner? Who do I interview? What music do I use? Because my episodes tend to be more scripted and I like to polish them. More work goes into creating each episode, as you can imagine, which is exactly why I am, for now anyway, going back to drumroll, releasing an episode every other week rather than every week.

Ute:

This podcast, like I said, is my passion project. I do it on the side and, yes, I would totally love to make a living at it, but the truth of the matter is there are so many podcasts out there and only very, very few actually can do this as a full time job. It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time and effort, so it is a lot of work. So every other week that means episode 40 is coming up in two weeks and there will be an interview, of course. Now enough rambling about my podcast production. Many of my listeners actually live in the Willamette Valley right here in Oregon and Harvest has started. In early September my Instagram feed was suddenly full of Harvest pictures and videos reels. It's been great. I very much recommend the Wine Linguist you just search it on Instagram. The Wine Linguist who threw Ticket Bramlets, our Legacy harvested got a Harvest Helper position with Remy Wines and she has been telling her audience about it and posting videos and pictures and I really do hope to interview her someday when she's all done with Harvest and is coming up for air.

Ute:

I know that many winemakers and other winery workers have no time or energy to talk about Harvest during Harvest. If you remember my former co-host, Allie, she's working Harvest at Penrash for a second year in a row and I wasn't thinking clearly and asked her if she might like to set a date to be interviewed about what she does at her job, and she gently reminded me that the last thing on her mind after a grueling work day is to be answering questions about her work. Fair point, allie. Fair point Now.

Ute:

If you're in the industry or you want to break into the industry, harvest can be a really great way for you to get your feet wet, quite literally. You have to be prepared, of course, to do a lot of hard physical labor. Much of it will be cleaning and disinfecting. Disinfecting is very, very important. Gotta keep everything clean. You have to be prepared to work six days a week at some point during Harvest though my understanding is it's not the entire time. You have to know you will be dirty, you will be sticky and your whole body will be achy, but and I really want to make sure to point this out it is also very, very rewarding and it is a great eye-opener about what is going on behind the scenes.

Ute:

And you know, here I am talking about Harvest. Like I know exactly what I'm saying, but I don't. I've never done a Harvest. Actually, that's not entirely true. I have done Harvesting for a weekend when I was a child. So my parents had friends and their friends had a vineyard, and so my brother and I, together with my parents, helped with harvest for a weekend, and it was a job man. I do remember being quite tired at the end of the day and I don't think I've ever slept so well in my life. It was really, really neat, which, of course, for us children it was a little bit easier. We had smaller buckets, but we still had to make our way up the hill, clipping the grapes, carrying the buckets back down the hill and then doing it all again in the next row. So really it was hard. It was hard, but that is nothing compared to the months of work that harvest workers do here. So I do not want to diminish their jobs at all. I know that what they're doing is amazing.

Ute:

I did consider doing a harvest for real, but in the end I decided I will leave that up to someone younger and in better shape than me. Not that I'm not in good shape OK, I do kickboxing four days a week and I walk a lot. But, heck you guys, my body is achy. When I wake up in the morning I'm pushing 50. I actually just turned 49. And let's just say my body knows what it likes and I know it will not like harvest. So there I said it. If it's going to be the wine industry for me, it'll definitely be customer facing or kind of a nice cushy office job, and that's just how it is. Or I could become really famous with my podcast and maybe I'll be a speaker, which I will get into the speaking thing later.

Ute:

Excuse me, with harvest coming to an end, and that means just the actual harvesting in the vineyards, the work is not over, of course. There's fermentation, punchdown of the grapes, pumping over of the juice, filling wine into barrels to age. All of this and more will be happening in the next few weeks, in some cases into December. Most wineries actually start their harvest season by bottling wine from the previous year to make space for the new wine. This usually happens in August, so harvest season will usually start in August. Now it turns out that the 2022 vintage was actually quite good. So last year, if you're familiar at all with the Pacific Northwest, we had a late frost in April and there were fears that much of the grapes would be lost. So then we had a long, hot summer, and I think I even read somewhere and don't nail me down on where exactly that was that Washington, the state of Washington, called 2022 one of their best harvests in 20 years. That sounds amazing and I am quite excited to try the 2022 wines.

Ute:

I'll be scheduling some winery visits for sure in the next few weeks. I think I'd like to get some in while the weather is still, so that I can sit outside and enjoy the sun. It's been a beautiful fall in Oregon so far some rain, but also plenty of sunshine, and it's supposed to be getting up to like at the second weekend. Wait, hang on a second. It's the first weekend of October. It's supposed to get up to like 80 degrees in Portland, which that's borderline to warm for me, not gonna lie. Anyway, if you have some wineries that I should go to, both in Oregon and in Washington, please feel free to contact me on Instagram or email me at info at throughthegrapewinecom. I will have that in the show notes, of course, and I just love recommendations, so fire away.

Ute:

So to get back to Ally, so Ally worked harvest, and by that I mean the harvest season until mid December. Of course, this is different for each winery. I'm sure some higher people into November only, but this is something that you're going to want to just check out. In, I don't know, winejobscom when next year comes up, the ads for these jobs, for these harvest jobs, usually start popping up as early as June, july. They really pick up heavily in August and even into September, so that'll be your time to check out those ads. Anyway, I am going to be very excited to be speaking with Ally and the Wine Linguist when all is said and done and they're ready to share all the gory details with me Now.

Ute:

In Germany and I think everyone knows by now that I am German, right. So in Germany harvest comes with another great tradition. As a matter of fact, I spoke about it in an episode last year as you may know, there are 13 wine regions in Germany. Each region has a wine queen and each year one of them becomes the German wine queen. Now, this is not an easy process. It started easy in 1949, when they crowned their first wine queen. It was all about having, you know, a well-fed, red, cheeked woman as the wine queen.

Ute:

This has changed over the decades. So now you have to basically have wine in your blood. You have to, you know, grow up in a wine family, work, harvest and work in the winery. You have to practically know everything about German viticulture, about the wine loss, and you know how German, how Germans, love their laws and especially their wine laws. Holy smokes. If you've ever done a W set or a sommelier class or whatever, you will know how difficult those laws are, not just in Germany. Actually, france and Italy are quite kind of up there with the laws as well. So they have to know the wine laws, they have to know their marketing, the science. They have to know everything. And the thing is they also need to know it in German and in English, because of course they will be, you know, a representative of the German wine industry in Germany, but also neighboring countries.

Ute:

Now let's make this very clear, my friends I am German, but I have the hardest time with German wine lingo. I mean, yes, I know the words, like you know Kabinett and Trockenbeeren, auslesen, spätlesen and all of that. But the wine lingo around that I don't know it because I didn't learn it in German, I learned it in English. Now, for these young women they're usually in their early 20s For these young women to know all of that in two languages, holy smokes, that is amazing. So I have nothing but respect.

Ute:

Now, as the wine queen. You do speeches, you teach classes, you moderate events, you travel to places, you attend conferences. It really is a year-long job. Now, of course I'm not going to go into as much detail as I did last year. If you want to know more about the German wine queen, how they are selected, the process they have to go through and all of that great stuff, I do highly recommend you listen to episode five of the podcast. In that episode I explain in detail how it all goes down, how they are. You know the process that they have to go through, the testing and the jury and all of that good stuff.

Ute:

So this year's German wine queen comes from the Frankenwine region, which is, of course, in Bavaria, and it happens to be also where the city of Nuremberg is located and that is where my 29-year-old daughter is now. So I know I haven't shared a lot of private stuff here on the podcast, but my 29-year-old daughter has just moved her entire family to Germany, to Nuremberg, and it's been hard, man, it's been really hard. I really miss her and I miss my grandbabies. They were like my babies, you know. They were like my kids and it's really, really hard not to have them around. So little side note the wine queen's name is Eva Brokman and she is 23 years old 23. That is so young.

Ute:

I watched the announcement on German TV and it was so heartwarming it was, I mean, you know, like any queen, you know announcement or whatever you know, like the beauty queen announcements that you would see here. That's what it was like, only they were not in swimsuits. So congratulations, Eva. This is wonderful. I hope that you're going to have the best year Not that she's listening to this, but I hope you're going to have the best year.

Ute:

Wouldn't it be cool, honestly, wouldn't it be cool if we had our own wine queens here? I mean, okay, now, bear with me. We could do this on a much smaller scale. The Willamette Valley AVA, for instance. It has 10 sub-AVAs Now. Each sub-AVA could have their own wine queen and then we select an overall Willamette Valley wine queen and she can then represent, you know, our beautiful wine region. I don't know. It sounds pretty good to me. I really think I'm onto something here, don't you think? You heard it here first? Friends, let's do this thing Well.

Ute:

Anyway, this episode, like I said, is going to be a little bit shorter, so it looks like we're just around the 20-minute mark. I do have a busy day coming up. Actually. I am going to be talking about women in the wine industry at a local rotary club. How cool, see, I'm going to be a speaker. That's what I'm going to be doing with my life. I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to, you know, feature women in the wine industry. Mark my words. Episode 39, that's where I said it.

Ute:

So, anyway, I slept really really badly last night. I got about five hours, which in my world is entirely too short. I need about seven to eight hours, so I'm really really missing my sleep. So, after publishing this episode, I will go through my presentation for the rotary club one more time. Then I'm going to be hopping back into bed for about an hour and get some more shut-eye. I'm serious, I need more sleep, you guys. Before I step on the stage Now, of course, in a couple of weeks I will be back with a new episode, and it will be an interview, of course, not going to give away quite yet who it is, but it will be great. So thank you so much for being here. Check out the show notes for links and stuff, and you know the drill. And with all that, all I have left to say, of course, is post.