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The ferry ride from Wellington to Picton was rough, but as soon as we entered Marlborough Sounds, the views were nothing short of amazing. Hills rose directly out of the water and rolled across and into each other. I spent my time on top of the boat taking pictures and on the bow of the boat sitting at a table with two nice old ladies who invited me to stay with them if I'm ever on their part of the North Island. When we landed in Picton, a very bus driver allowed me onto his bus, despite my not having a reservation, and we drove about 30 minutes down to Blenheim where he dropped me off at the train station and Becky picked me up to take me home.
Home. Home is a place where I have my own room with a big bed. I have a closet and a dresser and a drying rack. I unpacked my bag fully for the first time in 5 months and spread things out to different places. I plugged my chargers into walls where they have stayed for the past two months. Home is a cupboard in the kitchen and a shelf on
the fridge and access to a grocery store, which is the very first thing I did when I arrived at the house. I bought groceries. Everything was in English. It was glorious. I live with a family of four, a black lab, and a cat. The lab (Cole) and I immediately became best friends. The cat (Sonic) is weird. I had four days to get everything together before starting work.I was just getting into the swing of things. I opened a bank account and was learning a bit about the town. Then this pesky thing happened. Back in Wellington, I woke up one morning with what seemed like pink eye. My eye was pink and goopy and gross. I bought eye drops, wore glasses, and continued to live my life. When I got to Blenheim, my eye wasn't getting any better. I continued to put in eye drops and live my life. Then this thing started happening where I would get a searing pain above my eye whenever I saw daylight. I chose to ignore it until it became unbearable. Then it became unbearable. I was basically biking with my eyes squinted to the point of being closed because the
pain above my eye was so bad. I went home and googled things and decided that it was time to call an optometrist. On Friday night I sent out emails and left voicemails, hoping someone would be able to see me Saturday morning. On Saturday morning one person called me back and was able to see me. He had been doing construction at the new office, so he was in shorts and covered in paint. He looked at my eye and diagnosed me with bacterial hypersensitivity. Basically the bacteria in my eye (my OWN bacteria) had decided to rebel against me, thus leading to the hypersensitivity. The treatment he prescribed was how every girl wants to spend her Saturday: 2 eye drops every 15 minutes for 6 hours and then every hour for 48 hours (yes, including waking up in the middle of the night to put in drops) and then 4 times a day for 10 days. So the rest of the day I shut my shades, put on Netflix, and had a timer go off every 15 minutes. It was SO FUN. But it felt noticeably better by the next day, and on Monday when I started work,
the sensitivity was gone.
Over the next four days I rode my bike into town. It's free from the house, but it's pink and child-sized. I've gotten used to it by now, though. Mom sent my a care package with my running gear, and I started taking Cole for runs every other day. It felt so good to exercise again. I opened a bank account and went shopping. i watched a lot of Netflix.
Work began on March 14. I was working at one of the biggest (maybe the biggest?) wineries in the Marlborough region. Marlborough mainly produces sauvignon blanc, and that's what my winery is making so much of. SO MUCH. On induction day I rode my tiny bike to the winery. It was a lot of strangers, most of whom didn't speak English. Typical for me. I met an English girl named Tilly and a Canadian guy named Matt and we clung together amongst all the spanish and french speaking happening around us. Matt has worked in wineries before. Tilly, like me, had no idea what she was doing. Induction day was a very awkward combination of everyone introducing themselves to the group one by one
(again, poor English) and then a lot of power points on safety and procedure in which Tilly and I sweated a lot and exchanged glances. I had been seated next to Matt, but I was still monstrously overwhelmed. We had a great barbecue, more power points, and a safety presentation on chemical burns. Can't wait.
The first week we worked 8-hour days. On the first day we were actually in the winery we received hi-vis vests and followed around people who knew what they were doing. I was in a group with Matt, and he explained all of the things to me. I learned a ton. Mostly how to clean tanks. Some people during the first week were put into the crush and press teams and training began. The rest of us were put nowhere and told to follow people around. We cleaned more tanks. I started finding other people to follow around who were doing slightly more interesting things. Meanwhile, I was still insanely overwhelmed. Everything was about hoses and valves and pumps and spanners and chemicals. Not like anything I've ever done before. To clean a tank, you have to find a pump, hook hoses up in
a certain way, put a heavy spray ball in the top of the tank, fill it with water, and then go get caustic soda. The insides of the tanks are caked in tartrate after the wine ferments, so caustic is the only thing that gets it off quickly. We wore aprons, rubber gloves, googles, and masks to get the caustic. Then you rinse the tank with citric acid before flushing it with water and then you're done. The process takes about 45 minutes to an hour.
The first weekend I decided to go for a hike. I biked 6km to Withers Hills, which unfortunately does not allow dogs. The hills are bald, and I took a weird back way to get to the top. But when I got there, I was overwhelmed. It was exactly the reason I had moved to New Zealand. As I crested the top of that hill, exhausted and hot, I saw the ocean spread out in front of me. Next to me lay a valley of vineyards. And behind me were more mountains. It was unreal. I hung out at the top for a bit taking it all in, surrounded by sheep (yes, that
stereotype is real).
The second week of work we got sorted into our teams. There wasn't a lot of work to do, so we only worked 4 hours a day. I was on the Float/RDV team and knew as much about it as you do. We weren't actually trained on the machines until about Thursday. We didn't work Friday (Good Friday) and were getting grapes in on Tuesday.
We had a long weekend for Easter. My American friend (Adrienne), and my Indian friend/supervisor (Jassi), and I decided to drive up to Nelson for a night. Adrienne had heard about a climbing gym, and I wanted to get out of Blenheim and hike. We drove up to Nelson, which was a beautiful drive with hills rising suddenly out of plains and lots of sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. In Nelson we tried some wine and had some lunch and went for a walk on the beach. Then we went to the climbing gym where we met a couple of locals. We spent the night in the geographical center of New Zealand with our new friends (Josh and Rob) drinking wine and looking out over Nelson and the Cook
Strait. It was fantastic. The next day Jassi and I drove back to Blenheim, stopping for a little hike on the way. Adrienne decided to spend a couple extra nights in Nelson.
Tuesday began the 12-hour shifts. We worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Luckily, I was put on day shift, so my hours were 7-7:30. Night shift's hours were 7-7:30 but...the other one. Here's how the process of making wine works:
The trucks come in dragging about two trailers worth of grapes. They get weighed on the weight bridge while the people who work there check the inside of the trucks and make sure there's no hydraulic oil or anything on the grapes. The trucks then queue up and head to the crush pit. At the crush area, there are three hoppers, which are basically three giant bins that are sunken into the ground. The trucks back up and dump the grapes into the hoppers. When the hoppers are full (usually one or two truck-loads), the crush people press a button and the bins tip up 90 degrees. As they're moving up, the grapes move backwards into an auger which breaks the skins. An
enzyme gets dripped slowly onto the grapes as they leave the auger, which helps the skins separate from the fruit. There's also a huge magnet to catch all nails or bolts or metal things that the harvester might have picked up. Then the grapes go through the de-stemmer, which does exactly what it sounds like. All the leaves, stems, and other crap, get sent on a conveyor belt outside to the dumpster. The juice (which is the best quality) goes...somewhere, and the grapes get sent to the press.
Our press team was all guys because the hoses are SOOOO heavy. They're 4 inches wide and insanely thick. We have 6 presses at our winery as well as loads of tippy tanks. The crush team sends the grapes either to the press themselves or the tippy tanks if the presses are already full. The press uses a big bag to inflate against the grapes and press them against the screens inside. The clean juice comes out in a tub, which gets pumped to the 8 buffer tanks. The skins get sent underground to another auger, which takes them to the disposal pile. The tippy tanks help the press keep up
Hoppers
The grapes get dumped into these huge bins which get tilted up and the grapes get broken up and moved by the auger.and are 25,000 liters apiece. Those get filled with grapes and then tipped into the presses. Sometimes the float team (me) wasn't able to keep up and empty the buffer tanks fast enough, so the press guys would have to quickly connect hoses to send the juice into other tanks in the winery.
So now the juice is mostly skinless and seedless and in eight 50,000 liter buffer tanks (RFs). The RFs were constantly filling and emptying, so it was our job on float to keep up with it. Once a tank was full, we took a sample up to the lab and added enzyme or potassium metabisulphate (PMS...yes I know) and put a mixer in to mix it all up. Then we'd attach a hose to the bottom and the juice would get sent to the float machines. We have two float machines named CF-1 and CF-2. I named them Bert and Ernie because they were grumpy old men who broke all the time. As the juice went into the machine, gelatin, nitrogen, and bentonite would get added. Bentonite is basically clay. It's used in a lot of foundation and cover-up. It then got sent to a huge
Tippy Tanks
The grapes get put into these tanks which tilt up 90 degrees and dump the grapes into the press pool. The bentonite and gelatin would cling to all the proteins and solids and the nitrogen would push them to the top of the pool (hence, floating). The juice left on the bottom is then clean, and that's sent out to the winery to get yeast added and ferment. The crap on top is called flees. It gets vacuumed off and put into a tank inside.
Still with me?
So now the juice outside goes to the cellar people. They injected yeast and made transfers and let the wine ferment. The flees were still our job. The flees still have a good amount of liquid in them (about 80%), so they get put through the Dynamos machine which does a lot of fancy things and squeezes a lot more juice out until the flees are only 20% liquid. The juice goes into one tank, the flees (now lees) go into another tank outside. You'd think we'd be done, but this is a factory and they're going to get as much wine out as physically possible. This was another job I did. The Dynamos lees get sent outside to the RDV, which is a Rotary Drum Vacuum. We had
Press
You can see 2 presses in the picture. These roll and press the grapes against a screen to get all the juice out. The skins go through an auger underground and get sent up through that big yellow rectangle thing and get dumped on the ground in a pile to be bulldozed. two of those. This is a huge cylinder that lies on its side in a pool and is covered by a screen. The inside is a vacuum. So we had these huge bags of perlite, which are a really fine dust/powder/sand/carcinogen. We had to empty these bags into a pool of water to mix. Then we'd send it into the RDV to make a cake. The RDV rotates and vacuums up all the water and perlite. The perlite sticks to the outside of the drum while the water gets sucked through into the middle. We then extract the water from the middle until we have a thick enough cake (usually about 5-8 centimeters). Then we send the lees it. Now the cake is coated in lees and it rotates so all the juice gets filtered through the perlite and sucked inside. We send that juice out into a tank to be yeasted and fermented. The crap left on the outside gets slowly (SLOWLY) scraped off by a blade and sent into the dumpster because there's finally no liquid left. The RDV is a dirty job, but it's nice because we were left in our own little corner of the winery.
RF Buffer Tanks
This is the tank farm I took care of. We'd empty these as the press filled them and made additions and took dips and basically lived up here. This was harvest. 24 hours a day. Everyone was constantly short of pumps, hoses, spanners, and fixtures, but we made it. It was stressful and fast, but it was really fun. I especially got really lucky. Rather than doing the same thing every day, I was always on a new task. My supervisor, Oscar, usually gave me transfers from one corner of the winery to the other, which would take me most of the morning because I had to find hard lines in a path and connect hoses to get the wine all the way out. Then I'd have to sanitize the entire line, which would take a solid 5 minutes of pumping water and then finally taste on.
With all the technology in the world, the way you make sure no water gets mixed with the wine is this: one person turns the pump on. The other person is at the destination tank and tastes the water that is coming out onto the ground. When the water is juice or wine, they open the valve to the tank and shut the valve spilling out onto the ground. When the tank you're coming from is empty, you do
Float machines
Specifically Bert. The juice gets all those things added and then it gets separated in this huge pool. We control the speed of the flow and the rate of nitrogen addition. essentially the same thing to taste off. You send water through the line and someone is at the other end with the valve to the ground open jusssttttt a little bit. When that juice becomes watery, they shut the valve to the tank and open the other valve so the water spills onto the ground.
Two days a week, I was on RDV because it was someone's day off and they always needed two people there. It was a lot of squeeging and hosing and wearing gas masks and rain coats so as not to inhale too much perlite. On Sundays it was Oscar's day off and Amandine's day off. Oscar was our supervisor and Amandine knew the float machines really well. So we were left on our own, and Adrienne and I were somehow put in charge (being the native English speakers), so I took care of the buffer tanks, taking all the samples and making all the additions and rinsing them out when they were empty.
Some of the big events that happened during harvest this year: a press rolled and overflowed a few times with the doors open resulting in about 20 tons of grapes
Lees
This is all the solid crap from the wine. It floats to the top and the vacuums suck it up and send it to a tank to go through the Dynamos machine. falling onto the ground. We would shovel them up, put them into bins, and they'd go back in the crush. We (on the float team) burst a hose and lost a bunch of juice. I didn't seal a door properly and lost a lot of juice. But there were no huge issues with finished wine or anything. The bigwigs from the States came one day to visit, and I spent 8 hours water-blasting the cellar floor for their tour. About an hour before they arrived (in a sleek helicopter), someone spilled a press and we spent some time shoveling grapes.
The people I worked with were great. There were the permanents who mostly knew how to do everything and were always willing to help out. There were a lot of miscommunications with the casuals (like me) who didn't speak English very well, but we got there eventually. The head of the press team was this 39-year-old Czech guy who was known for running around shouting, “What the faaack? Who hires these people? Dumb!” He was our favorite to imitate. Everyone had to stick to their areas, but there was still plenty of time to make comments as you passed
RDV
The lees that have already gone through the Dynamos get sent to the RDV which is covered with perlite and lees in this picture. The drum is a vacuum, which sucks the juice in through the filtered perlite and then we extract the juice to another tank. by. We all got the hang of things at about the last week of harvest. Of course.
My days off were Wednesdays. Josh came down from Nelson for a few. The first day we went for a walk on the beach and then walked Cole and then went out to Indian food with Adrienne and Rob. On the second day off we drove up to Picton (where the ferry from Wellington docks) and went for a hike. It was gorgeous to hike above the harbor in the sounds. On my third day off, Josh ad to work, and I was more than happy to sit on my butt all day and watch Netflix. I was exhausted. The week after that, he came down on Tuesday night and we camped in White's Bay, which was much warmer than expected. We spent the next day hiking and then I had to go home and nap. Days off were also the only time I had to do laundry and shop. And one of the few days I showered.
Some nights were spent at the Italians' house for dinner and beers or at Oscar's for pizza and beers. I never made it
RDV
This is a side view. The blade is constantly cutting off thin layers of lees and perlite. The solid stuff gets sent to the dumpster. much further past 9, but I always promised to be fun after harvest. I asked the winery for a month-long extension and got a week. I worked ANZAC day, which is a public holiday, so they had to pay me time and a half. It was actually a really stressful day, but the money was worth it.
The harvest officially ended on the 29th of April, and that was our harvest party. At the beginning, Jassi had told me the harvest party was crazy. I didn't realize just how crazy it would get. We went to the horse track and the theme was “W,” which is apparently a New Zealand thing. There were a lot of Waldos, witches, and warriors. I was Winnie the Pooh wearing pants. A pathetic attempt at a costume, but I didn't want to spend the money. We hung out, ate food, and drank a lot of wine. The party was supposed to end at 6, but they ran out of alcohol at 4:30 so we all left for happy hour downtown. My friend Malou had come as the wild wild west and made a horse out of a broomstick and cardboard. My favorite memory
Tank Farm
Full of juice and fermenting wine of the harvest party was the very drunk Czech guy wearing a blue wig galloping into the bar on the horse. He didn't make it to the next bar.
The next bar was full of dancing and hugging and general merriment (a lot of harvest parties that day). Someone hugged me from behind and I turned around and didn't recognize him. He thought I was someone else. We got to talking (he's American) and he is going back to the states for 5 months and needs someone to take care of his car. So in a few days, he's coming to Queenstown where I'll be getting a car for really cheap for 5 months. Psyched.
A lot of people left the weekend after harvest ended. A few of us stayed on the extra week, but we were switched over to night shift, so now our hours were 5pm-3:30am. I tried as hard as I could to get on the sleep schedule the weekend before, but it didn't happen. However, the nights were unseasonably warm, and it was the best group of people, which made it fun. I transferred wine and then cleaned tanks all night while people got
into tanks to shovel out wine lees (you know what all these things mean now!) My boss offered me a contract until August, but I didn't want to spend most of my year in New Zealand in Blenheim. On my last night, our boss had everyone shut off their pumps so we could have a family dinner. We ordered Indian food and all sat down together. When we went back to work, I spent the night dancing around the winery singing whatever came up on my iPhone really loudly. The mood was great, and it was amazing. I spent the weekend packing my things and going to bars and on Sunday it was time to head to Queenstown.
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Andrea
Winemaking 101
Loved your blog. I always run into people that think the winemaking industry is so glamorous but it is really hard work. Safe travels to your next destination!