By Caroline M. Cole

Among the steps in making wine, fining or “racking” is one of the most important. Known as soutirage (in France), Abstich (in Germany), travaso (in Italy), racking is the process of separating the juices from the sediment that accumulates on the bottom of the vessel during the various stages of a wine’s production.

Using a flexible plastic hose attached to a racking cane, winemakers employ gravity to extract the wine from one barrel, tank, or carboy into a second, clean container, siphoning the liquid away from the “lees,” or sediment comprised of residual yeast that has helped in the grapes’ fermentation and other particles that have developed as the wine undergoes malolactic conversion (the production and releasing of carbon dioxide). Each racking increasingly filters and refines the liquid, helping the wine develop greater clarity; softer tannins; deeper, richer flavors, textures, and colors; more aroma; and greater sophistication and elegance.

Clarification and stabilization are signs that the winemaking process is complete and that the wine is ready for bottling but, during the various rackings, the wine is drinkable. Certainly it would be unwise to actually bottle the wine prior to clarification, for if it’s still undergoing fermentation, the wine would prematurely brown and spoil. Nonetheless, as the acidity mellows; the fruit, alcohol, acid, and tannins meld; and the aromatics round out, the wine itself becomes increasingly recognizable as a finished, refined product. And it’s from this process that we can learn much about our development as communicators.

The following discussion highlights some of the lessons that racking wine offers individuals who are interested in improving their oral and written communication.

• Know that sludge is inevitable. In order to extract the juices from the grape, fermentation is necessary to convert the sugars in the grapes to alcohol. Yeast is the catalyst for this process. Yet by introducing microscopic fungi to help in this conversion, yeast creates lees. The inevitable byproduct of an essential ingredient for vinication, lees cloud and obscure the early versions of a product vintners hope to share with others.

Sludge is likewise inevitable in the initial drafts of a speech or text as people struggle to identify their message and the clearest way to present it to others. Therefore, like wine, communication must be refined. Rehearsals may provide fining opportunities for oral communication, allowing presenters to filter and modify elements of their speech before the final delivery. In written communication, revising is the equivalent of racking, as each draft aims to eliminate the dregs while retaining the most important, flavorful juices of the intended message.

By understanding that refinement is a vital component of the communication process, we can resist assuming that the initial or early versions of any given presentation or written document is inherently sufficient for public consumption.

• Learn when to address the sediment. Throughout the winemaking process, the juice itself is, in essence, “wine,” albeit murky. Therefore, the winemaker must learn when and how to intervene if the juices are to become a product worthy of distributing and consuming.

Vintners will have different theories, strategies, and advice about when to rack, depending on the quality of the grapes at harvest, the varietals, the desired product, and so on. Yet regardless of their system, winemakers recognize that, although inevitable, sediment must be removed before the wine’s final release if others are to appreciate the results.

Similarly, ideas, conversations, and written documents are, at their core, “communication.” Even so, speakers and writers must know when to intervene, as well as how to employ various rhetorical strategies, so as to separate the essence of their message from elements that may be obscuring it for the target audience.

• Be purposeful and methodical in the fining process. Racking wine 2–4 times before bottling, winemakers monitor the yeast that remains after each fining to ensure the yeast cells do not break down and begin rotting, putting the wine at risk. To help in this monitoring, some vintners keep detailed records of climate variations, additives, pH levels, turbidity measures, sediment levels, and other oenological components to identify optimal racking windows; others are less formal, racking every 45–60 days. Whatever their system, winemakers must be mindful of the wine’s development to help it move through each stage efficiently.

Communication requires similar attention if speakers and writers are to gain clarity and elegance; unfortunately, even those who recognize the value of ongoing improvement struggle with broad, vaguely worded goals like, “become a better communicator.” Recognizing that is impossible to address or “fix” everything at once, we might identify concerns we and others have about our speaking and writing, prioritize our findings, and then develop a system for attending to each concern in the most strategic manner.

One such system appears in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, where the author, Ann Lamott, recalls the advice her father gave when her 10-year old brother found himself “immobilized by the hugeness” of trying to write a report on birds: “bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

Because small, purposeful, and methodical steps can make the process of improvement easier, we, too, might develop a system that allows us to engage with manageable, nugget-sized tasks; see and track the progress; and apply lessons learned even as we look for ways to continue improvement. For example, we could gather hard copies of representative letters, memos, emails, and other documents that we write—using blind copies to retain confidentiality. Then, each week, we might select one document (or a portion of the document) and, using the benefit of hindsight for how the document worked, spend 5–10 minutes identifying and revising things that could be stronger, tighter, clearer the next time around to enhance the results. Perhaps there’s a better way to introduce or transition to a topic in a document, or maybe there’s a more concise way to describe something. Maybe there’s a more logical or efficient way to sequence or otherwise organize information. Maybe there are places to direct readers for supplementary resources.

By examining, testing, and honing the approaches we use to convey messages in the calmer moments, we can ensure more effective rhetorical choices when generating comparable information under pressure.

• Be consistent. Like winemakers who must remain attentive to the progress of their wines, making adjustments as necessary, we must remain cognizant of and responsive to the elements that could affect the target outcomes of our oral and written messages. After starting a sample document file, for example, we might commit to spending 5–10 minutes each week to improving one document in the file. Or, conversely, we could focus on “fixing” one or two things in a document, no matter how it takes to revise it. Whatever the method or practice, we should engage in it regularly so as to create a habit that moves us continually toward improvement even when we may not feel inspired to develop our skills.

Explaining impediments to writing improvement, science-fiction author Octavia Butler writes in “Furor Scribindi” to “forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you are inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your [writing]. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” Therefore, even when we think a document is “fine” and even when messages generate the desired results, we should get in the habit of asking where and how the document might be even stronger the next time around. Or, we might consider why the document succeed in light of its purpose, audience, and context in order to identify what changes might be necessary for a similar message to work in a different forum.

By building in opportunities to conscientiously improve our speaking and writing strategies, we can become more purposeful and, ideally, more successful in our communication.

• Be patient. It can take over a year to make one batch of wine, and most of that time is waiting: Waiting for grapes to be harvested, waiting for the must to meet designated Brix levels before pressing, waiting for juices to ferment, waiting for wine to “oak” between rackings, waiting for wine to clarify and stabilize for bottling, waiting for the wine to recover from “bottle shock” and, finally, waiting for the wine to age within the bottle for optimal flavor. Making the wait harder are the moments when a particular process may seem to be over but, upon closer examination, vintners discover more to do. Each racking, for example, makes the wine noticeably cleaner but—especially in the earlier stages—the more the wine sits, the more obvious remaining impurities become.

Monitoring, testing, intervening as necessary and, above all, patience are necessary to generate an extraordinary wine. With each season, winemakers become more knowledgeable in their craft and, hence, more proficient in their choices; however, each harvest also brings different combinations of variables, thereby introducing challenges that may require vintners to modify their approach, even modestly. As such, developing a mastery in winemaking is gradual, and the same can be said of mastering communication.

Sometimes we must be actively engaged in the process. At other times, we must wait and see if our presentations or written documents are moving us closer to the results we want. Learning to balance these roles takes time. Equally challenging is the fact that, once we become proficient in a particular genre or forum, we may find that different combinations of variables introduce new obstacles. Adopting a new convention, addressing an unfamiliar audience, or working in an unknown context, among other changes, can make us to feel like a novice once again. The secret is remembering that, like making wine, developing communication skills takes practice and time.

Seeing grapes in the early stages of “punch down”—when skins, seeds, stems, and other elements from the vineyard are muddled in an effort to extract the juices—people often express amazement at the ways such muck ultimately results in some of the finest wines in the world. The same is true of the ways we speak and write. At times, our communication style may seem sloppy and unrefined, yet by purposefully and consistently racking off the sludge, we become more masterful at developing clearer, stable products that are not only palatable, but respected by some of the toughest critics.

Working toward Areté…
Start a sample letter/memo/document file and, then, commit to spending 5–10 minutes each week to finding one or two ways you could improve a document. Or, share your own experiences and observations about refining your communication abilities in purposeful, effective ways in the space below.