I’m looking back at the last week and am wondering why it took me so long to get a blog out, since all I did was work. And then it hit me: all I did, all I have done for the last couple weeks, has been work. 12 hours a day, every day, without fail. It actually hasn’t been all that bad, time flies when you are in the lab. There is always something to do, weather its taking the temperature and brix on a press sample, titrating a free sulfur run, or just cleaning and putting away test tubes. That said, the lab isn’t that big, and sometimes I wish I could be outside in the sun playing with my friends…I mean out crushing grapes and making wine.
That said, a few notable things did happen in the last week (despite the tardiness of this entry, I am still blogging about March 30 through April 5, and am writing as if I wasn’t very late in getting this posted). Let’s get the juicy bit out of the way first. I know I wrote in a previous entry that I wouldn’t gossip about my coworkers in this blog, but I will make an exception for this story, on the grounds that it directly affected my life, and the lives of so many of those around me. After a very strange sequence of events, Ian, the winery manager on night shift (a temporary hire for vintage), was fired. From what I understand (I am on day crew and am simply retelling what was told to me by the night crew), Ian had always had his own way of doing things, and had his own ideas as to how to run the winery. Sadly, his ideas were seldom useful, and it seemed like the first tasks for the day crew were to undo everything Ian did the night before. The joke at the winery was that Greg, the day manager, spent the first hour of his day pissed off because he had to deal with all of the things Ian did hours earlier, and the last hour of his day pissed off because he had to deal with Ian personally. Anyway, Ian had a meeting with the head winemaker one night, the meeting went south in a hurry, and Ian was fired.
Here is where things get strange: A couple nights later, I was in my room at the time on the internet, when I hear a knock at the door. It was Eric.
“Dude, you just missed the weirdest shit ever. Ian showed up at Duncannon and started hanging out.”
I guess he had come by to break the news of his sacking to us. Ian had gone by the time I got out to the common area, but everyone there were still musing and laughing about what had just happened. The idea was floated that his next stop would be the winery to say goodbye to his old crew. We all had a good laugh, and then went to bed. All of us couldn’t wait to tell the night crew what had happened when we got to work the next morning.
However, when we got to work the next morning, the night crew had stories of their own. Ian did indeed show up at the winery; but his intentions were far from friendly. He apparently had tried to start a fight with one of the permanent cellar hands, and then with Sylven, the winemaker on night shift. There weren’t any fights, but the police were called, and Ian was arrested for drunk driving as he left the winery in his car. The winery now has a security guard that stays at the front gate during night shift. And so ends the Ian saga, hopefully. He lives in town though, so I have a strange feeling we will see or hear of him again.
When you work so much, you have to learn to capitalize on the time you get off, even when that time is only hours, rather than days. So in more pleasant, but slightly less interesting news, I have gone on two long runs since I have been in New Zealand. Once I saw how beautiful the country was and how good the weather was going to be, one of the things I realized that I missed most from home were my running shoes, and running in them. It took me three weeks to find a running shop with shoes my size (I was working, so I only had days off to go looking), and I wasted no time breaking them in. My first run started off as a light jog to explore the southern part of Blenheim, but instead turned into a two hour round trip excursion, during which I found myself on top of Mt. Vernon, of one of the mountains which surround the Marlborough valley. To get to the top, I had to hike through a “farm park,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a nature park open to the public, but included fences, sheep, and cattle. It was a great little adventure, though I wish I had started it an hour later: when I got to the top of Mt. Vernon it was cloudy and by the time I got back to the bottom it was pouring rain, had I started later the view would have been spectacular. I will be back though, hopefully on a good day, and armed with my camera as well.
(Side note: this run actually happened during the previous writing period, but it fits more with this entry)
My second run came on a tip from Jules Taylor, one of the client winemakers. Jules has made a name for herself and her wines here in New Zealand; I’m not sure if she exports to the states, but if she does you should seek her wines out, because they are quite good. Some of her 2010 products even won some awards out here. Anyway, on her tip, I decided to run into town, but then make a turn down hill and run along the river (this is the same river that runs behind Duncannon. To my surprise, not only was there a paved path along both sides of the river, but the whole riverbank area was a public park: there were grass fields along both banks, some park benches, and even a play structure. I decided to turn around and go home at a spot where someone had built a small BMX bike rhythm section and a couple jumps. Jules said that the path runs all the way to the dam outside of town, but that was longer than I wanted to run.
As for the work itself, it still holds my interest. I have even found a way to enjoy my time in the winery a bit more, or at least make it pass faster. When I worked for Gallo, one of the things that people naturally assumed about my job was that since I worked for a wine company, I got to drink wine every day; sadly, I had to explain to people that I worked in grape assessment, and didn’t deal with wine at all. Now, I can honestly say that I do get to taste wine on nearly a daily basis. Part of the winemaker's job is to taste and make notes on all of the ferments. Normally, the wine for this tasting is pulled by another person, and the tasting is done in another lab on the premises. However, once the sugar level in a given tank gets below a certain level, my lab starts pulling the sample and reading it on the FTIR, since it is more accurate when dealing with small concentrations (it's a little more complex then that, but that statement is true enough for this text). That said, the winemakers still need to taste those ferments, so when I pull a sample, I always pull it so they have enough. Afterwards, there is always a little left over, and I figured if I was going to simply throw it out, I might as well taste it before I do. The best part is that Tina is OK with this: she is all for letting me learn about the sensory assessment of wine. Tasting the samples is probably the highlight of my day; I taste around five ferments a day, and every day each tank tastes a bit different. I am seriously considering bringing my journal in so I can take notes on what I taste, but I don’t want to push my luck. Besides, I only get to taste when there is nothing else to do in the lab, and those days are getting fewer and far between. Still, I am slowly becoming an educated wine drinker, something which I am quite thrilled about.
Asside from the interesting bit’s I wrote about in this entry, there isn’t a lot that goes on in the lab that I can explain to the layperson in detail. I can say this for sure: there haven’t been any mistakes so far, and none of our instruments have broken, so I would say that we are doing pretty damn good, all things considered. As of now we are about halfway done with our harvest, and since things are going much faster now that all of the grapes are ripe, the second half of crush should fly by. I hope so…as much as I enjoy these four-figure paychecks, I am really looking forward to going back to 8 hour days, and eventually the end of my assignment.
That’s all for now. I’m sorry there aren’t any pictures in this entry; I’ve already shown you the inside of my lab, and this last week that’s all I’ve really seen! Hopefully Tina will email me some pictures of some sunsets over the winery soon, and when she does I will post them with this entry.
Take care everybody!
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