Anzac Day

I have the day off today. It's Anzac Day. I'm not really sure what that means for the country. Catherine said it's an equivalent to Veteran's Day in the States. It's a holiday which comes with holiday pay if one works. Holiday pay here is time and a half plus a day in lieu. Since it's not necessary that I work today, I'm given the day off, unpaid of course. It's a recession yo.

Eleven days straight averaging around 10-11h days. I elected to do not much of anything today. My body said so. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Just stating the facts. Gave me a chance to post these photos from the last couple of weeks. They're from the vineyards and from around here. I'd have pictures from the winery but I don't take my camera out. They've got a camera at work that they take pictures with so I'll have some at the end of harvest I think.

We pressed off our first red ferment 2days ago. It was barreled yesterday. I don't remember it going this fast last year but maybe it did. There's still fruit to come in and plenty to do so I've gotta get home and rest up.

Enjoy.

Not quite ready. Ferris I Vineyard on Cairnmuir Rd in Bannockburn

Bee damage

The aftermath of bees and wasps (yellow jackets)

The reason for bird nets. This one got into the nets and had to be liberated. Was told it's a native species so it can't be shot.

The aftermath of birds

Ready to be picked. I didn't catch the name of this vineyard. It's on Felton Rd and the location of the panoramic photo in the previous post

Pinot gris and pinot noir. They're not supposed to be right next to each other in a row but it happens. Planted by accident or possibly placed by nature....Pinot gris is a mutation of pinot noir

Pisa Range from Chad and Catherine's house. Second morning of work at the winery. It rained that day during processing too.

Random field off of Pearsons Rd near Bannockburn

Same

Lake Dunstan at about the 45th Parallel South marker

Poplars

Kawarau Gorge commute. The evening I wrote the last entry.

Rte 6. The Kawarau Gorge Rd in front of Jones' Fruit Stand

Motutapu Rd. Near Wanaka

Same

Intersection of Felton Rd and Bannockburn Rd

Gibbston Valley Wines Winery. We were racking the 2007 Reserve Chardonnay this day. Pete's filling barrels on the left.
Yes. This is the winery. It is outside. Cold mornings. Cold nights. Brilliant days

Yeah

I felt compelled to write this tonight. Unfortunately, I'm writing this at home and I don't have the energy or desire to attempt to upload photos. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

We had an incredibly easy day today. Another instance when the microclimates of Central Otago play havoc with scheduling. Grapes didn't get picked because it looked like it was gonna piss down rain all day in Bendigo. It's one of the regions where GVW gets their grapes and where we were supposed to getting fruit from today. The picking was canceled. And then of course the weather turned out to be fantastic. Seriously fantastic. I don't recall seeing a sky that color this evening in a long long time–if ever. It was on my commute home. My daily commute is through the Kawarau Gorge. There are pretty good sized mountains on both sides of the road once I'm in the gorge so there's less sky to see. Once I come outta the gorge back into Cromwell area, the mountains drop down and the sky seems to open up. This evening it did. I took some pictures but I have no idea if they'll be able to capture what it all really looked like. Kinda like the Grand Canyon–you can try your hardest but you'll never really be able to take a picture that captures everything. There's just too much to take in. Oh, yeah.... There was a rainbow on my way to work this morning...

My commute would arguably be one of the most beautiful in the world. Especially now with autumn really starting to take hold. The poplars have kicked it into high gear and the native or more likely, non-native deciduous trees are picking up speed. The vineyards are really starting to change. There's one in Lowburn that's orangish–red, green and yellow. I'd say that the entire area is roughly 6-9 days from hitting it's stride. The gorge is something else. You've gotta experience it for yourself but I'll do my best to give you a mental picture.

The road into the gorge starts out pretty straight and then it dives downward and to the right. Almost immediately the walls go up and then are rose hip bushes and scrub grass all around. Thrown in pretty often are conifers. They're not really in groves like in S. Oregon along US 5, but more wild. Randomly interspersed between the coniferous dark green are yellow and yellowish-green poplars or some other deciduous tree. Never that many. A handful at most. The Kawarau River is off to the left. It's not really viewable until I get to the Goldfields or whatever gold mining monument it is. I really should stop one of these days and see what it's about. The road winds along through the bottom of the gorge while your field of vision expands and contracts as the mountains move around. I know I'm about half way when I get to Roaring Meg Lookout. It's a left hand turn that has a hiking path hidden in the pocket off the exterior of the apex of the turn. At the interior is the lookout. Again I haven't stopped to look, but the river comes into view again here. Pristine blue. Like a swimming pool. During the warmer months, there was normally river rafting vans parked in this vicinity to cart the adventurous down to surf the rapids here.

More winding and twisting and I get to the part right before I cross the Kawarau River. Here the floor of the gorge opens up and gives much more to look at. The yellows and the greens are in almost every feasible shade here. It amazes me every time. Just beautiful. After I cross the bridge, the Nevis Bluff is roughly 60-90s ahead of me. They've just finished working on the bluff. Previously I'd hav'ta wait for 20m or less while the road was closed for blasting on the bluff and clean up. A helicopter is best way to transport whatever to and from the workers. It was pretty wild watching a helicopter carry off a bag of rock debris and then rise outta nowhere after I'd passed the Nevis traffic stop.

After the bluff, are a few curves and then the Gibbston Valley. It just opens up wide. The river is about 200m off to my right. Sheep and goat land and vineyards make up the entire floor. It's quite a socioeconomic visual of the wine industry here as you go through the valley. I say this because there are completely unkept vineyards to well–manicured and lush vineyards along this part of the road. I thought Zeestraten was bad. It's nothing compared to Anthem. Wanna see what pinot noir looks like when it starts trying to resort to wild-type? Take a look at Anthem. A few more short jogs and I'm at work. There's hardly any traffic and if there is I can usually pass them at some point.

The best thing about this country–there's only 4 million people here. It's evident during this commute and the scenery around here. The worse thing about this country–there's only 4 million people here. It hurts when trying to buy goods. Those running shoes I lost one shoe from–$105USD. Here they're 249$NZ! That's $140some odd dollars USD! I'm not sure yet how people live the way they do here.

Ah well. Another long day of fruit tomorrow. And the weekend will be jammed packed too. I'm having an immense amount of fun although I'm a bit frustrated. I'm passed the survival mode of harvest. That was Oregon's vintage 2008. Now I'm into the part of the curriculum where I should be covering theory and I'm not entirely grasping what's going on. Additions to wine don't entirely make sense to me. Could also be the nature of how things are done at the winery and not having the flow down. Could also be not seeing lab results on a regular basis. I don't really wanna be in lab, but it would be good to know more of what's going on when. I think it's time to bring over some process ideas from the other places I've worked too.

And with that, I'm off to zappos.com to get myself some cheap shoes.

Peace fam. Stay frosty.

And Happy Birthday Janet!
Happy Birthday Eric!

First Day of Harvest

It started again today... Sore back muscles, the blackening and cracking/drying of my fingers and palms, long full throttle days, cherry-cough syrup flavored grapes, earwigs, the unmistakable smell and short olofactory burn of Citric Sulfur, beautiful purple-blue berries with intense aromas, cleaning and being wet, the instantaneous change of plans, great conversations over interesting meal choices, and oh soo soo much fun!

I know I said I'd be underground for a while but I felt compelled to write this tonight. I'm still gonna post about the vineyard but I'm back on somewhat dated technology for internet use so it'll hav'ta wait.

So I was to arrive at GVW today at 9am for preliminary ish and to get ready for the upcoming fruit arrival tomorrow. I don't even think it was 9am when I got there and plans had already changed. "We're getting fruit today." Yeah? Alright. Or something to that effect. It's too long ago to remember correctly. I do remember some part of the conversation with Sascha, the assistant winemaker about how they like to throw us into situations and go for it, something about the best way to learn or something like that. In hindsight, I really didn't need more time to get situated than they gave me. Everything fell right back into place even though I haven't done any of it since November. Granted, I didn't expect to be driving a fork lift today but Sascha took it easy on me and gave me pretty straightforward tasks to complete.

It was looking like it would be a really great day. The temperature was around 16-18C. Sunglasses were necessary. Layers were coming off. Tanks were ready. Destemmer was ready. Must pump was ready if necessary. Oh, I forgot to mention that it poured here last night. Not for more than 15mins at a time, but it would dump when it did. But that's ok. If it's raining here in Cromwell, it doesn't mean it's raining in Gibbston which was fine for me since I was going to Gibbston. Well it was just a taste, because it started at about 1030am. A few fat rain drops here and there but nothing to put layers back on for. And then it just didn't leave. Did I also forgot to mention that about 85-90% of GVW's winery is outside with no cover whatsoever? I think I did. The crushpad (where the fruit is processed–it comes off trucks, gets weighed and then stacked for destemming. The destemmer does just that, it removes the berries from the stems into one bin while the stems get sent to another "waste" bin) is also outside. The fermenters have full–on covers to protect the contents for outside elements. So we all put on raincoats and finished the first delivery of fruit before lunch. I think it was 8tonnes. And then the rest for the day came in, in the pissing-down rain. Christopher and Sascha looked after us really well, however, pulling out extra layers of dry clothes and wet weather gear. You're gonna get wet in winery. The question is how wet. I cannot stress how important a proper pair of gum/Wellington/Muck/Bogs/shitkicker boots and a pair of quick drying pants are for winery work. For me anyway. Life in a winery is so much more bearable if your socks/feet are dry and your pants dry quickly.

The mass of the storms had moved toward Cromwell and Bendigo where the vineyard is and the pickers were so they were stopping for the day. But it was still raining at GVW and we were still plugging away. I think it was 20tonnes by the end of the night. Couldn't tell you for sure. I worked about 10h today and was pretty tired when I left, but it was still a really fantastic first day. Even with the rain. There's rain for most of this week and even snow in some areas tomorrow. But who cares? It's all part of the experience and I'm really looking forward to it all. And with that, goodnight.

Peace fam. Stay frosty

I lost ONE shoe

'How do you lose one shoe?' you might ask. One way is to put them on the roof of your car before you go to work in the morning and then forget you left them there until you get to work; get out of your car and see there's only one shoe on the roof... I wish it was in fact an April Fool's joke but it wasn't. I think it'd be almost better to lose both shoes than just one. They were my running shoes but I hadn't planned on having to replace them while I'm here. I mean Zappos charges something like $60 to ship over here and NZ prices are cruel once you start making NZ wages. They'd been everywhere with me in the last year too; Tikal in Guatemala, Granada where I almost got jumped, Panama Canal, Huayana Picchu at the top of Machu Picchu, Frederick, Peoria, the Columbia River Gorge, McMinnville, and Cromwell NZ. Damn. So now I've gotta get some replacements and figure out what to do with a left shoe.

Harvest is here. Most wineries are taking in fruit. It's a slow trickle at the moment with the majority of the grape picking happening after Easter. I spent the last 3 days helping with the picking in some way, shape or form. From actually picking clusters, to ripping the clips off of bird nets, to running buckets. It's a good time all in all. Far cry from watching the Latinos at Momtazi Vineyard run up and down the hills. So my time as a Latino/Mexican has come to a close for harvest in the S. hemisphere this year. I learned a helluva a lot but was reminded today how little I do know (I'll try to put up a post of vineyard/grape photos from the last couple of weeks. Monday I start at Gibbston Valley and they're bringing in fruit on Tuesday. Seems that people like me swimming in the deep end. Eh, whatever.

Autumn is also here. The last of the stone fruit has been harvested and we're onto apples and pumpkins and other fall/winter produce. This weekend is Daylight Savings Time. Spring forward fall back, right? Yep. Except a lot of things here are flipped upside down here so I'll be falling back tonight. West coast US will now be 5h ahead (except it's yesterday). We've had a few frosts so the leaves are starting to change color. The poplars have really started first–a yellowy orange color. It'll be really something when all the vineyards start changing colors in earnest. The whole place should look like it's on fire.

What else? Umm... there's a bunch of pictures here. Lots are from the Wanaka A&P show from about 3 weeks ago. It's the equivalent of a county/state fair. It only lasts 2 days though and it's pretty small considering the amount of agriculture here. Mmm... There's some more pictures from Zeestraten (I finally saw it spelled out). I really took a liking to that place. We spent about 2.5-3 weeks there doing ish. Yeah it's probably a money pit, but it still warms my heart when I'm there. I would forget about the neglect and smell the evergreens and enjoy the silence.

Soooo.... with me moving over to the winery on Monday, there's a good chance that I'll be underground for a while. I might get time to come up and breath every now and then but I don't know how much time or energy I'll have to post here. Please feel free to email me though as it always got has first priority.

Peace fam. Stay frosty.

Minature Horse Cart-Time Trials. Hilarious

Judging Pavilion

Fair Kid. Love the hat

Wool Judging Shed

Way before it's spun

Beta sheets and disulfide bonds

Before...

...After. What you can't see in the top picture is how massive this sheep's wool was. I could've probably buried my hand in there and still not touched skin. The after sheep look sunburned, huh?

Quantum. He weighs 1.5tonnes (that's 3300lbs). He was ginormus and wasn't the largest one there. His father was bigger.

Quantum and Gwen, one of his handlers

Me and Quantum. "You wanna a picture with him?" Yeah. Can I? "Lay on him." I don't think so.

Gibbston Valley from the Corona Range Road

Gibbston Valley Wines

Sunrise at Zeestraten 1

2

3

Spider in the Banockburn Pub toilet. It's translucent for sure

Clutha River at Zeestraten

Same

From a terraced vineyard on Felton Rd. I didn't catch the name. Poplars on the right turning yellow. I think cherry trees turning red on the left. The poles in the vineyard are windmills to fight frost