The dangers of making wine

Despite Russell Crowe wandering around vineyards and the work of making wine being seen through rose tinted glasses, it’s actually damned tough and at times, very dangerous. The earthquake in Napa Valley shook things up and luckily no one was in the cellars at the time or they would have probably have been injured or killed by the crashing barrels like what happened in DO Empordà a couple of years back. The barrels are extremely treacherous as each way 350kg on up when full–and they roll.

Unfortunately this morning, word came down about a young enolog by the name of Nerea Pérez dying in the Bierzo region. She was doing punch down on one of the large tanks, apparently lost her balance (it’s extremely easy to do), fell in and then asphyxiated on the gasses given that in the tanks during fermentation there is only CO2. By the time emergency services arrived, she had already died.

A sad event of the 2014 harvest and even more so for her family, including her uncle, Raúl Pérez who is also a well-known enolog.