"Mog, Mog...Who's there?"



"Materials Other than Grapes," that's who....
"Mog" or Materials Other than Grape as it's called is exactly that: all the stuff except the grapes. This includes leaves, canes, stems. petioles and yes, the occasional spider or two. Anyway, this is what our box of MOG looked like today. All of our grapes here are hand-picked so there is much less MOG than there would be in grapes that are machine harvested. Of course, this photo was taken after we swept and cleaned up. Between sorting, the floor looks like a tornado has come through with leaves and stems strewn all over. First, the person picking up the lug boxes dumps about 30 pounds of grapes at the start of the sorting table conveyor belt. While the grape clusters are traveling down the belt, our hands fly everywhere as we hand sort and pick out stems, leaves, spiders, and substandard clusters. A lot of large scale wineries do not do this step of hand sorting which is another differentiator for small-scale versus large-scale. There's a cost associated with taking this step. But for K & C, this is what sets them apart. Their wines are hand-crafted all the way through. Today we went through 180 boxes (that's 5,540 lbs or about 2.4 tons). During the short break between pallets of grapes, we swept up the mess on the floor and dumped those into bins along with the pressed pomace. One cool thing I've discovered is that many production wineries take this stuff and basically compost it. Here at Chinook, we spread it out over the edge of the vineyard and Mother Nature takes care of the rest. It becomes a wonderful ground cover and puts nutrients back into the soil as it breaks down. Circle of life!