Herzog Enologist teaches our children science of wine-making!

Do you know what an Enologist is?

Well the children at Gan Camarillo do! Thanks to Ilan and Chaya Wilbur's Mom Alicia, who is the Herzog Wine Cellars Enologist!

In full uniform, Alicia shared with the children the reasons why she needs big rubber boots, 

and cellar uniform to do what she does!

The children took turns squeezing grapes with a hand held tool! 

At the winery, they have large machines that do all that hard work of squeezing grapes!

Did you know that the juice from red grapes and green grapes are the same color?

After the squeezing process, the juice needs to be tested for sugar levels, and then given yeast to control how sweet the juice remains, in order to turn it into wine!

We poured grape juice into a graduated cylinder and then dropped three different Brix Hydrometers into the juice.  One sank (gauge was too low for the sugar level), one bobbed out (gauge was too high) and one measured the correct degree of Brix, which was 16.  A hydrometer works on the principle of density/specific gravity.

The children watched with fascination as some of them floated, and some of them sunk!

Then we took a pipette and put a drop of the juice we crushed from table grapes and read the Brix with a pocket Refractometer, which measures solids via its refractive index.  The top of the vision field is blue, the bottom of the field is white and where the two intersect corresponds to the degree of Brix. 

We all enjoyed eating the yummy grapes and tasting the sweet grape juice at the end of the visit!

THANK YOU ALICIA WILBUR for sharing your time and talent with us!

Gan Camarillo is always looking for opportunities to share with our students REAL LIFE experiences and lessons from people who are part of our community. If you have a specific talent or skill you would be willing to share, please let us know!