Bodega Bouza

One morning we visited a wine vineyard just outside of Montevideo.  Given that I have decided to study labor conditions in the wine industry for my independent study project in 5 weeks, this was my first chance to see what that might be like.  I'm hooked.  I'm enchanted with the opportunity to study the wine industry because wine-making has always seemed like such a mystery…they squeeze grapes and then what?  The complexity of it and the opportunity to learn about something well beyond my comfort zone is daunting and exciting.  But anyway, on to the visit.  We traveled about 30 minutes outside of Montevideo to a small vineyard that produces about 80,000 bottles a year.  We had a wonderfully cheerful and personable guide who was able to explain the different techniques for cultivating the varieties of grapes, the harvesting, squeezing, and fermentation process, and the aging techniques employed by the bodega.  After our tour we had the opportunity to do a little tasting…after seconds of deliberation we gave in and tasted a delicious white, and two reds (a tanat-merlot and a merlot…because I guess I should start keeping track of this stuff) I didn't much care for. 

But the most important part of the visit was an idea for my project that our guide, Diego, inadvertently planted in my head.  I asked about the workers, and he mentioned that the vineyard really likes to keep the same workers season-to-season because a) it's such a specialized industry, and training new workers takes time and b) for a better, consistent product it's important to have workers handle the grapes in a consistent fashion.  This intrigues me, because it seems to suggest (if this is true, and if workers are aware of this advantage) that the wine industry might be one of a small group of industries in this region where workers, by virtue of the work they do, have a slight advantage in the labor market.  We'll see what the workers I talk to in Mendoza have to say…but it would certainly be wonderful to find a growing industry that favors (if only slightly) the workers.