Shoveling Grapes

My first day back at work after my trip home was a fun one. I missed my work mates and was greeted with open arms. To shake things up a bit the red grape team invited me to shovel the remains of a tank (the lees). Sounds like good times right? 

The skins of the red grapes stay in with the juice to give red wine its colour. Once the skins and seeds settle to the bottom of the tank the get shoveled out and pressed again to get the remaining pinot noir juice out. 

It turns out there is a dangerous level of carbon dioxide inside the tank at this point. Therefore I have to ''sign my life away'' on the waiver below. For protection there is a vent from the top, a carbon dioxide reader and a spotter in case I run into any trouble. 

One bin of grapes down.....many more to go!

How do you get in? Slide in through the front.

This is taken from the top of the tank.
You can see the carbon dioxide reader in
the opening on the left, and the yellow
tube pumps in fresh air.

A brief trip home....

The blog has been a bit quiet lately. Sadly I had to make a trip home to say goodbye to my Aunt Stella. She was 79 and had been suffering from ALS for the past 4 years. I will miss her dearly as she was like a grandmother to me. I flew out of New Zealand April 6th to Toronto, returned April 13th and was back at work the next day.

Vintage 2011

I have just finished week 2 at the winery....wow it has flown! I have some photos to share for those of you who have been asking "what do you do all day"? And I know many of my family members will be surprised that this little princess is getting her once manicured fingernails dirty with manual labour! That's right, this ain't a glamorous job....my life is now lugging large hoses around, running pumps and carrying a jumbo sized wrench wherever I go.

The immediate duties to get ready for the grapes is cleaning the vats/tanks and cleaning the barrels. That was wrapped up in the first week and now me and another girl are looking after yeast inoculation of the white wine. So if any of you comment that the Kim Crawford 2011 Savignon Blanc comes off a bit "yeasty" I won't be laughing:)

I am very fortunate to be working with a great team. I absolutely LOVE my supervisors and the people I am working with. I am making fast friends with some people from Canada, Ireland, California and some locals. 

This is the big cheese - Head wine maker Anthony

The first grapes to arrive!!!!

It is customary to have some bubbly when the first harvest
grapes arrive....well if I must, I must......
This is me with the de-stemmer machine.

To my surprise, 80% of my work will be outdoors.
It will make for some frigid times when I start at 7am!
Here is my new wardrobe with a cleaning pump....nice eh?

The winery presses and storage tanks with the
beautiful mountains in the background.

This is Calvin from Ontario, I am helping with
a red yeast inoculation. Right now we are plunging
the grapes trying to get them to the right temperature.

This is me adding white juice to the yeast and
monitoring the temperature with a thermometer.

Kaikoura

My last stop on my Kiwi Experience bus tour is the small beach town of Kaikoura. In Maori Kaikoura translates to ''meal of crayfish'. I did indulge in a tasty little bugger during my visit:) The area is also know for their species of blue penguins and fur seals. I have a nice picture of one here that came out of the water to show off. I rented a bike and went around the large penninsula. I had to keep reminding myself I was not on an island as the trail went on and on. The most disappointing thing that happend during my stay was swimming with the dolphins early one morning. The pacific ocean was angry that day my friends, and I reafirmed my sea sickness on boats.......(no photos for that!) Regardless, this is a place I would go back to!

Street scape of Kaikoura

Fur Seal and photos of the penninsula

Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park

I have had a good week working at Kim Crawford so far. They have been going easy on us with 8.5 hour days as oposed to 12 hours. We have had some temperatures that haven't been quite warm enough so they are leaving the bulk of the grapes on the vines a bit longer. In the mean time I will blog about the rest of my time traveling before I share my experiences at work.

Milford Sound is located in Fiordland National Park. What is the difference between a fiord and a sound? Sounds are valleys created by rivers and fiords are valleys created by glaciers. New Zealand was mapped by James Cook and he missed Milford Sound, twice, because its narrow passage way could not be easily seen.

It is said to be the most famous tourist destination in NZ. The 4 hour drive to the National Park was beautiful and of course photographs don't do the steep mountains and scenery justice.



View of the opening of Milford Sound from the Tasman Sea.
This is the opening that James Cook missed on his mapping.



A look at some marine life of the Tasman Sea.
This photo is of black coral which gets its name from the
black spine when it is out of water.

Photo Diary of the Deep South

After Queenstown I went and did a tour of the most southern point of New Zealand. First inhabited by Scottish settlers, we ironically experienced some very Scottish weather. Cold, wet and windy for most of the day, then the sun came out towards the end.

We first visited Dunedin, The Catlins Conservation Park, Invercargill and Milford Sound (separate blog for that one).

Catlins Park - Nugget Point Light house and
you will notice the Nugget Islands in the background

Angel D at the McLean Falls

Part of the hike to McLean Falls

Curio Bay - part of what I like to call hippie haven

Rock Forest - home to the NZ blue penguin

Baldwin Street in Dunedin - this is the steepest street in the world!
Somehow I managed to walk it with my bad knee (see bandage on left knee).

Bungy!

 I did not dare participate in the Bungy activity. For some reason I have no desire to pay hundreds of dollars to jump off a bridge???

Our tour bus make a stop for a couple of hours at the Kawarau Bridge, the home of bungy jumping, so people could take 141ft jump. I went up onto the bridge next to the jumpers to watch. It was fun to watch the ones whowere absolutly terrified....

your heart almost skips a beat when you watch them on the way down.

This is a girl from our bus and she is from Sudbury.
The last thing out of her mouth before she jumped was "I'm so scared"....but she did it!

I had a bunch of time to kill so I went next door to a wine tasting room and restaurant.
While I was sampling the wines of Central Otago I noticed this man walk in from the ajacent meeting room. This is Henry van Asch and he is the co-founder of Bungy! He took a bunch of his millions and purchased the winery that I was sitting in.....Cool! Oh, and he liked my Hello Kitty shirt:)