An Introduction

Today was the first day of work for the Two Hands 2011 Harvest Crew. We gathered for an introductory meeting at 8ish (ish refers to whenever Matt Wenk, our winemaker arrives). In addition to Erica, Chelsea and myself, the crew is made up of:

Nathan: a native of the Barossa, also our housemate

Fabbiano: an Aussie born Italian

Tim: a Kiwi who has left his wife and 5 month old baby at home in New Zealand to come here and make good money to support his “small family”

Pedro: is from Mexico and recently received his masters from the Enology program in Adelaide

Reed: from Santa Barbara. Nicest wine dork I have ever met. Also tells terrible jokes, a la Freid and Rigel.

Darren: Another housemate from Cali. Very talented musician.
Lindsey: Californian #5. This smarty-pants graduated from undergrad with a chem degree and thus will be doing lab work during this harvest.

Florent: One of the prettiest exports from France I’ve ever seen. His family owns a small vineyard in the Rhone Valley, but he’s come to Oz to learn English between his junior and senior year at university.

It’s a pretty diverse team which is going to be awesome.

During our meeting, Matt laid out how the next 10 days or so will go for us… formal induction will take place tomorrow (apparently we get a handbook that is 2 inches thick). Wednesday is safety training day. Friday we’ll be barrel tasting EVERYTHING in the cellar, followed by, as Michael, the owner of Two Hands promised: naps under trees.

We took a short tour around the Marananga facility where the smaller production, finer wines are produced and then took off for Rocland, a facility where much of the Angel’s Share and higher production wines are produced and aged.

Rocland is a huge warehouse-like structure, housing hundreds of barrels. We spent the day racking barrels, which is the process by which lees (deposits of dead yeast) are separated from the clear wine in a barrel, as you pump out the clear wine into another receptacle. In this case, we used a “small” volume pump to pump Angel’s Share from about 60 oak barrels to a 5 ton stainless steel tank. A high volume pump was used to simultaneously pump wine from that tank into smaller tanks that were sitting on a flat bed. Once full, those tanks were driven over to a 3 story tall tank where the 2009 Angel’s Share will sit for a while longer. Whew. Once the barrels were emptied, they needed to be turned over to dump the remaining wine and lees, which we collected to be reused at a later date. The barrels were then cleaned with a high pressure washer, treated with a sulfur solution to keep the barrels from becoming too porous, then an acid mixture treatment was introduced and then the barrels were filled with water to be stored.

Racking barrels is a very, very tiny part of the process that it takes to bring a bottle of wine to our market shelves, but it is enormously time consuming. Although racking is simple, repetitive and only mildly physically strenuous, today has left me exhausted and with a new appreciation for every drop of wine I will ever taste.

Erica and I did muster enough energy to take a walk down the street for a cozy Valentines Day dinner at the local "bogan" (whiskey tango) hangout. We weren't expecting much, but the people watching was excellent and the chicken schnitzel and garlic bread were actually quite yummy. Happy Valentine's Day!