(I apologize in advance for any typos or grammatical errors in the following entry: it is 3am here in Oz and I’m taking advantage of my post PM-shift energy to knock out a little blogging.)
The weather here in the Barossa has been unusually cool, and hence we have just now gotten fruit (a.k.a. berries, also known as grapes) in, FINALLY! My best guess is that we have crushed about 20 tons of fronti (a.k.a. frontignac) and 25 tons of chard this week. But since I’ve been a bit remiss in keeping everyone up to date on the goings on Down Under, I’ll back up a bit…
The highlights from last week include more cleaning, getting my forklift license (I’m proud to say that I rocked that exam, both the written portion and the practical – the instructor even said: “Didn’t you say that yesterday was your first time on a forklift?), and another weekend trip to Adelaide. Our friend Chelsea bought a car and we took advantage of her new wheels by heading to Glenelg Beach. (No shark sightings, Dad.)
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| beach babes (our Aussie friend, Jen, on the left) |
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| Perhaps the beach isn't the place for you? |
This week began with a bang with our first loads of fronti coming in on Monday. Fronti will be used to make Muscat… not a wine I typically tend towards, but after crushing this week, I’ll be really excited to taste the 2011 Two Hands Muscat : ) As I was working the night shift (beginning at 3pm, ending at whatever time everything was clean enough to go home, which was, in this case, at 2am), everything was already in progress by the time I arrived. After a couple solid weeks of cleaning, it was a breath of fresh air to see something else going on at Branson, and even though the day crew was exhausted, there was a bit of excitement still lingering in the air. There was definitely more excitement when at one point I approached Florent to ask a question: he immediately got an “uh-oh” look on his face and then pointed to my head and stuttered… naturally I violently shook my head and started jumping up and down and screaming. Some might guffaw at my panicked state. However, the spider that was crawling on my forehead happened to be a White Tip. One of three things can happen if a white tip bites you: 1. Nothing 2. You will break out in a rash and itch uncontrollably all over your body for a few days 3. The tissue around the bite will die and you’ll be left with an unsightly lesion. Fortunately, this white tip was on the ground and squished before he could cause my forehead to disintegrate. How he got on my head, I’ll never know. Australia is a scary place.
After that adrenaline rush, I jumped in on the sump as that appeared to be as good a spot as any for some baptism by fire. The way “crushing” (the term used to describe turning grapes into juice) works, is that the grapes are loaded into a giant receival bin (think the size of a dump truck basket). One person controls the speed at which the grapes are tipped from the bin into the de-stemmer, which in turn controls the speed at which they fall into the sump (the pump that pumps the grapes from underneath the de-stemmer through a cooling apparatus and then ultimately into the press. While this should be a pretty simple process, and I’m sure it will become moreso as time goes by, I managed to fail manning the sump properly and the grapes overflowed onto the ground… not a good feeling to see fruit lost, especially hand picked fruit, as is the case with fronti. But thankfully, the cooling apparatus didn’t freeze over the grapes that were slowly going through, which would have been a nightmare, so we were back on track within a few minutes. As mentioned, the grapes then go into a press, (not my photo, but the third picture from the bottom shows you what a press looks like: http://www.hillsidewine.com/photos.htm). The pressing process is what takes the longest and is when the juice is pressed off of the must (grape skins, seeds and remaining stems). The juice is pumped from the press into a fermenter. This whole process seemed wildly intense the first go around, but now that I’ve been a part of it a few times, it’s getting to be somewhat natural.
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| Flo monitoring the bin. |
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| The de-stemmer with Pedro monitoring the sump. |
While everything is largely mechanical, there is still a good dose of human intervention and ample room for human error in the process… Naturally, the rule to live by in this business is to get as much juice/wine as possible from the vine to the bottle… hence, every time you pump must, juice or wine through a hose, you “push” out what remains in the hose into the tank you are pumping it in to with water. The goal is to close the valve when the wine becomes “watery-wine” not “winey-water”. Conversely, if you’re going from tank to tank and there is water in the hose already, the goal is to taste winey-water, not watery wine… This process is called “tasting out”. I’ll try to get a video of it up here at some point, but it basically involves hand-to-mouth repeated slurping and spitting of water/juice/wine until your taste buds sense the perfect balance and then swiftly shifting levers or hollering stop to whoever is manning the pump… it’s pretty intense… especially when you consider tasting out one of the nice vintages where a one second lapse in judgment could mean the loss of a few liters of $150+/bottle wine. Yikes!
Anyway, it’s been a refreshing change from cleaning all the time, although crushing leads to more cleaning, as after each load of grapes, everything that those grapes have touched must be hosed down, wiped clean of all grape remnants and put away in it’s proper place. The rule of thumb is that about two hours of cleaning will follow the conclusion of the crushing of one variety.
After working the night shift on Monday and getting home at 2am, I hopped in a car with Chelsea, Tim and Reed at 5:15am on Tuesday morning to head to McLaren Vale to tour the vineyards we get grapes from there. It was a fascinating morning, walking the vineyards with Michael and Matt… seeing their process in action… tasting the grapes as they told us exactly what they look for when they visit. Leading up to harvest, Matt often walks the vineyard blocks daily, looking for the exact flavor profile, the perfect intensity and of course, the desired baume (the concentration of sugar in the juice or must of a grape that will lead ultimately to the alcohol percentage the wine made from that grape can naturally achieve).
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| Hamming it up for myself. "Grape Tasting" |
Some highlights from this tour included meeting our co-worker Fabbiano’s father, who owns one of the vineyards we will eventually get shiraz from. Also, we got to meet Fred, a fascinating elderly man who has lovingly tended to his family vineyard for 60+ years and thoroughly enjoys bragging about his “old” vines… “Ack, they must be well over 130 years old by now.” What made our encounter with Fred even more exciting was that I LOVED the fronti grapes we tasted in his vineyard… they tasted like the most amazing lychees I’ve ever had. And even better, we crushed 7 tons of Fred’s fronti tonight. Now that’s coming full circle.
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| Fred talking about his old vines. |
On Wednesday we did a bit more cleaning and then on Thursday we took a tour of the Barossa to check out the vineyards we get grapes from around here. We met Evan Pfeiffer at his vineyard that morning and today we crushed his chardonnay. Pretty cool. We then enjoyed another 2 hour pizza lunch, complete with a plethora of tastes from Michael’s excellent cellar and then went back to Branson for another couple of hours of light cleaning.
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| Veraison: the onset of ripening. So pretty. |
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| Some seriously old vines in the Barossa. |
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| l-r: Darren, Trent, Fabbiano, Reed, Nathan, me, Erica, Michael, Lindsey, Chelsea, Tim, Florent, Pedro, Matt |
Today being our assistant winemaker Ben’s birthday, I decided it was time to try some baking. As many of you know, I thrive in the element of a modern day kitchen. Here in Oz, I have no KitchenAid. No electric mixer. No proper mixing bowls. And our oven is broken. So, naturally, I did what any girl would do… Whipped up a double batch of quadruple chocolate chip cookies (cocoa batter, milk chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips and white chocolate chips) in our wok. Yes, a wok. I sifted flour with a cheese grater. I mixed with a slotted spoon (which eventually snapped in half). I then hiked down the street with Erica and Chelsea to Josh Pfeiffer’s beautifully outfitted home and baked while Josh prepared the first Mexican meal we’ve had in Oz: burritos!! So yummy!
The one thing I do love about working night shift is that I can be one of those people you see from your office window, out running, or doing yoga in a park in the middle of the day, and you think to yourself “What the heck does that person do that they can just run around town at 11am.” Well, that’s me. I work the night shift at Two Hands : )
Since we’re not getting any more fruit in until later next week, Matt gave us a four-day weekend… to make the most of it, Erica, Chelsea, Reed and I are heading South to Kangaroo Island… Yes, there will be wild roos and if we’re lucky, perhaps a koala or two!!
