Bryce Crawford

At Robert Mondavi Winery, my vision surrounds assisting the main wet lab in all ways possible. During harvest, my focus includes vineyard maturity analysis, juice panels, bench trials for additions, press cut analysis of newly dry wines, yeast counts and viability, and polyphenolic analysis via spectrophotometry and WineXray supporting software/website. Outside of harvest I perform all usual wine lab tasks such as assessing enzymatic assays via Chemwell (G/F, malic, acetic, total sulphur, NOPA, ammonia), running aeration/oxidation analysis for free sulphur, running a titrator for pH and TA, running an alcolyzer and handheld DMA for percent w/w alcohol specific gravity and density, running the spec and turbidity meter, assessing dissolved CO2, reagent creation, and compiling all of the data into one central location for ease of use. I also deal with some of the day-to-day logistics of reaching our goals as a lab, and offer my advice when asked about how we can better achieve those goals and push ourselves further the next go around. I've learned that the lab is much more than just a data farm, it's a critical step in maintaining and adding quality to our flagship wines. The microbiological assessment at Mondavi includes microbe identification, plating post-bottling wines for release or hold prior to market, plating wines before they get bottled for load on filtration, spot checking efficacy of sterilization through the winery, autoclaving equipment for sterility, creating media for plating, PCR through the Genedisc for spoilage microbes, and other tasks as directed by the Lab manager and Winemaking. Clerically, I order supplies and instrumentation for the lab, balance my purchases at the end of each month, and help with workflow between the lab and other departments. I maintain a library of estate and non-estate wines intended for microbial analysis later on in their lives. I also create, modify and test out new and existing SOPs for feasibility and ease of use.