Contrary to what I am sure is your initial impression, I did have some fun this last writing period. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I had a fantastic beginning to this writing period. On Thursday (March 17), I rented a bicycle for the afternoon and went wine tasting with Eric. We biked into the valley west of Blenheim and tasted at four wineries and one microbrewery, in the spirit of St. Patrick ’s Day.
I can’t remember the last time I put in so much time on a bicycle. And honestly, I can’t think of a better place, or better circumstances to do it. Essentially, we biked until we ran into a tasting room, and then relaxed for a few minutes while we tasted wine. Afterwards, we hopped back on our bikes and did it again. Of course, it happened to be a gorgeous New Zealand afternoon that we decided to do this, and many good pictures were taken. After we finished tasting, we had to hurry back to return our bikes before the shop closed. It was a challenging ride for a couple out of shape harvest workers, and it didn’t help that there was a headwind the entire last leg back, but we made it back to the shop with five minutes to spare.
We tasted wine at St. Claire Estates, Hunter’s, Cloudy Bay, and Sarasin, and tasted beer at Moa Brewing. I made a list of all of the wines that I liked, but I will publish it in one of my final blogs; I still have close to two months left in this country, and since I plan on tasting again, the list is going to grow. I am not the right person to make insightful and intelligent comments about the wine I taste, as I am still new to all this. At this point I can tell the difference between common wine varietals by smell and taste, and even put a name to a few of the very common ones, but detection of faint or obscure aromas and tastes still eludes me. I’m happy with my progress though, I don’t think many chemists my age can do what I just described. It was great tasting with Eric though; he is very passionate about wine and winemaking, and nothing escapes his nose or his taste buds. He and I have very different tastes in wine though: of the four wineries we tasted at, he preferred the wines at Sarasin, which is known for only using native yeasts in their ferments. As a result, their wines taste “funkier.” Yes, that is an official wine industry descriptor. Yes, I am being serious. Eric’s reason for his unique preference is that he’s tasted so many fruity and floral wines, and it’s nice to have a change of scenery, if you will. I on the other hand still quite like fruity, floral wines, so I didn’t enjoy their wines as much as I did the others. There were still a few things for me to like about Sarasin though: Sarasin grows olives on their property in addition to grapes, and produces some very good olive oil. I will be passing a bottle along to the my resident olive oil connoisseur back home (ie: my mother), to see if it stacks up against the oil we picked up in Sicily. Also, the view from Sarasin was breathtaking: the winery itself is situated atop a low hill in the middle of the valley, and from the top you could see over all of the vineyards. It was the last stop on our adventure, and it was a great way to end the day.
The day was not quite over though. After all, it was still St. Patrick’s Day, and after a day of wine tasting, I was very ready for large quantities of beer. I woke up and went to work the next morning hangover free, but with a strange green smear, which I think was a tattoo made with green food coloring, covering the underside of my right forearm. Everyone at work had a good laugh at my expense, and I was right there laughing with them.
I had a second adventure during this writing period as well: on Saturday, March 19, I went to the Havelock Muscle festival. Paul, one of the guys at Duncannon with a car, had planned on going, and had a few extra seats, so I snagged one, Jess, the other lab tech at Mud House, snagged another, and Alison, another Mud House harvest worker, got the last one. The adventure began the moment the car left Blenheim: none of us had ever been to Havelock, and Paul hadn’t been there in six years. Yet again, it was another spectacular New Zealand day, so the scenery took every opportunity to show off. The landscape changed from an almost completely flat valley, to very step green hills. Havelock itself is located at one end of one of the Marlborough Sounds, and to get there we had to drive some narrow, windy roads. The region looked quite a bit like the coast range in Oregon, but with different flora and warm sunlight, something which I’m sure the residents of Cannon Beach, Oregon know nothing about.
We got to the muscle festival and the fun began. Havelock is renowned for its greenshell muscles, named after the muscle’s green edges. Havelock actually has a muscle processing factory, and few workers live at Duncannon as well; however, for obvious reasons, none of them were interested in going. I had never tried muscles before, and I figured this would be the best place on earth (literally) to get a taste for them. I think I tried muscles prepared six different ways, one of them was even prepared personally by the man who won Master Chef New Zealand, a television competition similar to Hell’s Kitchen back in the states. Every muscle I had was fantastic, from the basic method of preparation: simply boiling the muscles till they opened and serving them with lemon, to the elaborate concoction prepared by the Master Chef. My taste for them was not even soiled when I entered a muscle eating competition; sadly, these muscles were cold and came from a small plastic tub. My only goal was to out-eat Paul, and that dream was dashed the moment the guy next to me started throwing up. Sylven, another Mud House worker who found a ride to the festival, actually got a video of Paul and I in the competition, but sadly I do not have it to show you. After eating our fill many times over, we spent the rest of our time there listening to and dancing to the live music playing on the main stage.
the end of the day, Sylven piled into the car with us and we drove home. However, Paul decided to take us on the scenic route, so instead of driving back to Blenheim the way we came, we took a narrow road along the sound east to Picton, then drove south to Blenheim. We stopped along the way to hike up to a vista point, where we could see Renwick and the sound. Sadly, my little point and shoot camera can’t do the scenery justice; as I said in a previous blog, sometimes you just have to be there yourself. I like to think I did ok though. On the way to Picton, Paul also found a tree that an entire family of birds had nested in, so of course we had to take pictures. The rest of the drive back to Duncannon is a bit of a blur, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in back seat.
That weekend was the best one I have had thus far in New Zealand. I wrote in my week 1 entry that at the time, nothing extraordinary had happened thus far; nothing had happened that I would look back on and say ‘this would only ever happen in New Zealand.’ In those 72 hours, I had two of those experiences. I hope to have more in the weeks to come. However, it may be a few more weeks before I even get free time to do so.
“12 hour day today. 53 grape samples. Word on the street is that tomorrow will be a half day because of some rain coming into Nelson, but I’ll believe that when I see it. They told us that today we would be done by 4:30, and we were there till 8. I think it’s time to bust this one out: Welcome to the suck.
Exhausted. Bed. Tomorrow is another day (3-21-11).”
The days since were spent in a similar manor as that Monday. We didn’t have 12 hour days every day, but they were still long days. Everyone knows that our remaining days off are numbered, and if I am going to have any more adventures during crush, they are going to be impromptu. Though, now that I think about it, it’s more of an adventure if you don’t know what is going to happen, and if college has taught me anything, those have the potential of being even more fun. Time will tell.
That’s all for now. Talk to you next week!
-DK
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