I was doing some “wining” today, setting up for tomorrow’s racking process at my friend’s hobby vineyard. When all is said and done, we will have about 280 bottles of the 2018 vintage. The grapes were picked in September, while I was out of town, while crushing took place several weeks later. I’m currently drinking the 2016 Walleye Vineyards brand, after hand picking & pressing the pinot fruit and pruning the vines on which they once flourished. Their small crop is located on a slope in their spacious backyard with a ranch-style entryway marked by a wooden “W,” in honor of my friend’s father. Last year was the first time I participated in racking, a method referred to as Soutirage – gravity-feeding wine from one barrel to another.

During the pressing of the grapes, that many people associate with the humorous grape-stomping episode of TV’s I Love Lucy, the juices are drained from the mechanical press into buckets and moved into a water heater sized stainless-steel tank. In our modern-day process, no bare, poorly sanitized feet are used to smash the grapes…right Ethel? Today, we prepared a wooden barrel that will provide the wine’s next resting place in the various stages of fermentation, when it’s siphoned from stainless tomorrow.

Four of us will get together as part of tomorrow’s special “Leadership Meeting.” It’s a stinky process, so there will be no actual wine tasting, but plenty of Coors Light will be consumed after the work in done and we celebrate at Wanker’s Country Tavern. The Walleye will then take-on an oaky flavor from being stored in the round barrel. It’s purified with Sodium Metabisulfite (SO2) and rinsed with hot water before we slowly roll the barrel back-and-forth on two planks to allow the solution to escape through the single hole, before we’ll add the grape juice. All I could think of while we were doing this was the polka song, “Roll out the Barrel,” but realized I didn’t know the words just the melody. 

According to Wikipedia, the “Beer Barrel Polka“, also known as “The Barrel Polka” and “Roll Out the Barrel“, is a song which became popular worldwide during World War II. The music was composed by the Czech musician Jaromír Vejvoda in 1927. Bobby Vinton recorded “Beer Barrel Polka” in 1975. The song was released as the follow up single to his multi-million selling “My Melody of Love” and reached number 33 on the Billboard (his last Top 40 hit there) and number 45 on the Cashbox Top 40 hit charts. The success of the single, which was particularly popular on jukeboxes, led to its inclusion on Vinton’s Heart of Hearts album in 1975. I remember trying to dance to it at a Polish-Italian wedding that I once attended:

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There's a garden, what a garden
Only happy faces bloom there
And there's never any room there
For a worry or a gloom there
.
Oh there's music and there's dancing
And a lot of sweet romancing
When they play the polka
They all get in the swing
.
Every time they hear that 
Everybody feels so 
They want to throw their cares away
They all go
.
Then they hear a rumble on the floor, the floor
It's the big surprise they're waiting for
And all the couples form a ring
For miles around you'll hear them sing
.
Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel, we've got the blues on the run
Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer
Now's the time to roll the barrel, for the gang's all here
.
Then they hear a rumble on the floor-or-or-or
It's the big surprise they're waiting for
And all the couples they form a ring
For miles around you'll hear them sing
.
Roll it out, roll it out, roll out the barrel
.
Sing a song of good cheer
Cause the whole gang is here
Roll it out, roll it out
Let's do the beer barrel polka

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So now, we all know the words. Tomorrow, the gang will “Roll out the Barrel” once again as we complete the racking process. In this case, however, it will be a round, oak wine barrel, not the golden liquid typically associated with the song. Nonetheless, “we’ll have a barrel of fun.”