Ahh… yes, the light at the end of the tunnel. After 23 days of 12 hour shifts we only have three more before going to an eight hour work day!!! We found out yesterday that on Saturday we will work from 2pm – 10pm. The “Cherry on top” is our day off on Sunday! WhooHoo! [...]
Archive for April, 2005
New Zealand has the most amazing sunsets! You can see nearly every color in the rainbow (including green!). This was a particularly spectacular one. I took the picture from on top of the catwalks. I always try to get up there each day to look at it.
Ever heard of the fancy wine term “sur lie”? It means “on the lees,” otherwise known as dead yeast. It’s supposed to give the wine more complex flavors. Here I am stirring the fermenting Chardonnay barrels in order to stir up the yeast that has settled to the bottom. It’s really fun to climb around [...]
Here is Paul digging out a tank of red grapes that has finished fermenting. After the fermentation is complete, the wine is pumped out and the grapes skins shoveled into bins to be pressed. It’s a messy job, but somebody’s got to do it!
After 16 straight days of 12 hour workdays one might be exhausted, sore and miserable… Well, I am exhausted and sore, but I still like my job. My previous descriptions of my hands hurting are not entirely true anymore. I have gotten used to the pain. It,s still there, more than ever, but I have [...]
This is how Paul spends a lot of his time at the winery. Here, he is “punching down” the cap of skins that rises to the top of the fermenting Pinot Noir. The punching down ensures that the wine gets lots of color extraction from the skins. Its kind of like giving it a massage.
This is me in my coveralls getting ready to rack a tank of juice. After the white juice is pressed, it gets pumped into a large tank like this and is left to “settle” for a few days. A lot of solid particles like seeds and other things fall to the bottom and all the [...]
Here is Paul in his work get-up. The men are having a beard-growing contest (no one is allowed to shave during vintage) and Paul had already won when we arrived (he was the only one who had started a beard already). In this photo, he is connecting glycol lines to some new wine tanks. The [...]
This is a photo for all you folks who have made comments about “stomping the grapes.” I wish I had a dollar for everyone who said something about that– it would finance our trip to N.Z.! This photo shows the grape crusher that does the “stomping” mechanically. The grapes are poured into a hopper, go [...]
This is where we have been spending most of our waking hours the past 10 days. The smell of fermenting grapes (one of my favorite smells) is beginning to permeate the place! Paul spends most of the day on top of those silver tanks punching down the red grapes as they ferment.
