Well folks, the 12 hour shifts have come to an end, yet the winery is still operating on 24 hour shifts. We're (un)lucky enough to have scored the 11pm to 7am shift, so we're currently readjusting to night shift (we'd begun to work days a few weeks ago) and beginning to decompress from the madness that was vintage 2008.
The good news is that the end is in sight - May 9th (or 10th or 11th???) will be our last day of work. May 12-21st we'll be traveling around the South Island saying goodbye to the country that's been our home since mid-December. May 21st we fly home and after 24 hours of travel we'll hopefully be back in the USA.
Thanks for all the emails and comments from all of you over the past months. As the work hours come back to are a more manageable level in the next few weeks, hopefully we'll get a chance to write more.
Cheers,
Steve
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The 84 hour work week
How do you make half a month disappear? Why you work 12 hour shifts for 3 weeks straight, that's how. Finally, after 3 weeks, we have a bit of some time off. It's not really a "whole" day off, but more like we're switching from night shift to day shift (note to self: bring sunscreen).
So here we are, it's mid-April, and we're well into vintage. I believe we've processed slightly more than half of the grapes that we'll receive this vintage but there's still much work to do. The end of the perfect growing season has been a bit of a wild ride, weather wise, with colder temperatures (frost=bad), rain and birds affecting the grapes that are still on the vine. Some grapes you see coming in are in good condition, and others are suffering from botrytis or slip rot. Luckily, each block of grapes is kept separate from the others so the good ones aren't affected by the bad.
So what have we been doing from 7pm to 7am each day? A mix of things really. First of all, the thing that takes the most time out of our work day is finding all the necessary equipment to complete your assigned task. When it's busy, you're hard pressed to find the pumps, hoses, fittings or other assorted stuff you need to complete the task. That coupled with people who don't put away their equipment after completing their project is really frustrating. Equipment is in such a short supply at times, that I've actually had my project poached by others while I'm still gathering up things to get started. Let's just say this made me REALLY mad.
Much of Jesse's day is spent at the receival dock where the trucks dump their grapes into a bin. The grapes are then sent through a destemmer/crusher and pumped directly into a press or into a tippy tank where they wait until there is a press available. Careful attention must be paid to how much goes into the press or into a tippy tank. A lapse in judgment can cause quite a spectacular explosion of grapes.
There are so many additions of chemicals and solutions to the juice to turn it into wine that frequently we find ourselves schlepping 5 gallon buckets full of Bentonite, Potassium Metabisulphate, Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) up a 30 foot flight of stairs. Who says wine isn't healthy?
Also, we spend a good deal of time racking and transferring grape juice from tank to tank. As part of the wine making process, grape juice is put into a tank and allowed to settle. The clean juice is then "racked" off the stuff that has settled out, or lees. The lees then are filtered and sometimes readded to the clean juice.
Cheers,
~S
So here we are, it's mid-April, and we're well into vintage. I believe we've processed slightly more than half of the grapes that we'll receive this vintage but there's still much work to do. The end of the perfect growing season has been a bit of a wild ride, weather wise, with colder temperatures (frost=bad), rain and birds affecting the grapes that are still on the vine. Some grapes you see coming in are in good condition, and others are suffering from botrytis or slip rot. Luckily, each block of grapes is kept separate from the others so the good ones aren't affected by the bad.
So what have we been doing from 7pm to 7am each day? A mix of things really. First of all, the thing that takes the most time out of our work day is finding all the necessary equipment to complete your assigned task. When it's busy, you're hard pressed to find the pumps, hoses, fittings or other assorted stuff you need to complete the task. That coupled with people who don't put away their equipment after completing their project is really frustrating. Equipment is in such a short supply at times, that I've actually had my project poached by others while I'm still gathering up things to get started. Let's just say this made me REALLY mad.
Much of Jesse's day is spent at the receival dock where the trucks dump their grapes into a bin. The grapes are then sent through a destemmer/crusher and pumped directly into a press or into a tippy tank where they wait until there is a press available. Careful attention must be paid to how much goes into the press or into a tippy tank. A lapse in judgment can cause quite a spectacular explosion of grapes.
There are so many additions of chemicals and solutions to the juice to turn it into wine that frequently we find ourselves schlepping 5 gallon buckets full of Bentonite, Potassium Metabisulphate, Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) up a 30 foot flight of stairs. Who says wine isn't healthy?
Also, we spend a good deal of time racking and transferring grape juice from tank to tank. As part of the wine making process, grape juice is put into a tank and allowed to settle. The clean juice is then "racked" off the stuff that has settled out, or lees. The lees then are filtered and sometimes readded to the clean juice.
Cheers,
~S
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)