"march in a nutshell" the written version

Alright, I'm finally writing a new blog. so for all my loyal fans out there. your welcome. I suggest reading parts of the blog, I anticipate length. Reasons for not writing a blog for over a month include Harvest (no need really to explain the hard work), awsome weekends and downtime (some of which i'll elaborate on), and really the most important, a broken computer. I also Apologise for not posting any pictures to go along with this blog. Go look at my facebook if you want to find the picutres. I've posted some new ones there.
Let me start with the broken computer. About a month ago now, it started acting up and freezing. This freezing was due to the Hardrive, it would start making an uncomfortable clicking noise, followed by no activity.  Ironically it started while I was trying to do a softwear update on my security, well played Apple. To further the ironic twist it completely died on my attempt to back up my pictures to my hardrive. Now when I "turn it on" the main white loading screen with the apple comes up then after about  seconds the hardrive begins its rythmatic clicks. Did I also mention that the nearest Apple store I beleive is in Melbourne. Thats about a 10 hour drive or two weeks bike ride for those of you not up to date on Australian Highways.  After ignoring my computer quite succesfully now for  weeks I have started looking and found a computer shop in adelaide that services Mac's. At this point im pretty sure the computer is done, and I really just want to recover my data. I did however give all my pictures to a fellow intern before he left, So I at least wont loose any of my australia pictures, everything else is backed up on my computer.  Other than breaking my 6 or 7 year old RayBans thats really the only bad news.
In Great news, St. Hallett (the winery I work for for those of you who forgot) has asked me to stay on after harvest till june 1st-ish. Of course I accepted. More time, more money, more experience. I like the crew I work for, I like the facility, there is still more I can learn and I can probably sit in on some blending actions. I booked my origional plane flight home for june 30th, so working till the 1st gives me a solid month of travel. There is a chance I might extend that 2 more weeks (making it 6 months in aus)due to tax purposes (that two weeks could be worth upwards for 4k depending on how the tax laws read. more on that later.  The Other very good news is that I have secured a harvest position for 2012 North American harvest at Ridge Vineyards. I will be working both in Sonoma and in the Santa Cruz mountains. I'll be helping out with vineyard sampling in sonoma and the santa cruz mountains then getting to make the wines up at Ridge's Monte Bello Facility.  Its going to be a smaller harvest in regards to tonnage but the winemaking practices, quality, and learning experience appear like they will be the best yet. Words can not describe how excited I am to get to be part of making the Monte Bello wine and living near enough to santa cruz again. More on all that later as it develops. Oh, and you could probably all visit, its a lot closer than oregon. Do yourself a favor and check out the Website for Ridge Vineyards, they have some very cool vineyard maps and a nice display of the wines.
On to what i've been up too.  Since the last post, which was like middle of Febuary A lot has happened as you would expect. Harvest was in full swing, we now have only  fermenting tanks left, all the other wine is in tanks in various stages of going into or out of barrels spread across the tanks of the winery.
 My main job for the last month has focused on pressing the reds since we finished getting in all of our whites a month ago or so.
Red Wine Pressing in a nutshell:
1. things to remember, red wine is fermented on the skins, so we do not press it off right away like we do white grapes.
2. First we must drain the wine not soaked up in the skins (the skins float creating what we call a cap.
3. Then we must get all the skins into one of the various presses we have through any number of processes. This is usually the most physical part involving scrapping, digging, pulling, cursing, poking, crying, shoveling, kicking, crumpling, throwing, followed by more cursing. Some tanks are harder than others, and some grape varieties create a more or less dense cap. it also depends on how long its been in the fermenter.
4. Press the shit out of it. because we are making a giant, bold, flavorful, tannic wine. (Dads favorite style) we literally press the shit out of it. Making Shiraz is not the finnesse winemaking that Pinot Noir can be. We beat the crap out of our grapes to make the style of wine the Barossa is known for.
5. empty press of the dry skins, which get taken off by another company who distille it make an number of alcohol based products including spirits which we then use to fortify some of our wines.
6. clean. The press, lines, tanks, flood, clothes, all need to be cleaned after this is done.
I like pressing, Its a pretty fun job with a lot of parts to it and you get to taste the wine right as it becomes dry wine.
Now to go weekend by weekend highlighting all i've done. Now I say weekend loosly because I really only have had sundays off until the last week. But Matt (intern who i worked with at elk cove) also has sundays off, and his winery gave him a car. we have not yet had a bad weekend.
The weekend of March 2nd started with a mexican feast due to the number of Americans Present. I think out of 12 there were 5. Thank you to Syd (reasercher for Gallo) for providing the excuse to make homemade Mole Sauce and slow cooked chicken and pork. If you know me you know that Mole is my favorite flavor, combine that with slow cooked pork and some great Reisling I was in food heaven. As were most people around the table. I proudly ate the leftovers for breakfast/lunch/dinner. That next day being sunday we wine tasting, including a trip to Jacobs Creek (pretty much some of the worst wine possible, but they are synonomous with the Barossa valley. It was worse than we all imagined, and we expected bad. Then we Follwed all the asian tourists to their next mandatory stop at Penfolds. Penfolds is another large famous winery in the Barossa known for "Grange", a 700 dollar tannin bomb meant to age 30 years. we refered to that day as our corporate tasting.
The weekend of march 9th consisted of Matt and I going down to Adelaide in search of the Coopers Brewery. We found it, but apparently on sundays they arn't open for a tour, tasting, or t-shirt buying. Bummer. My only two souvinears from Australia are going to be a steriotypical aussie hat to wear out in the vineyards and A coopers T shirt. Upon Failing to make it to the brewer we just went and walked around Adelaide, I found some boardies, made our way out to The beach at Glenelg, swam in the ocean for the first time, and found a beachfront pub to enjoy some hoppy beer and a burger. Not a bad sunday.
Weekend of March 16th, St patty's weekend, we out with the Two Hands Crew, thanks guys for making me really feel that ten pounds of fat i've lost. drank green beer, went wine tasting on sunday to some cool spots, including giving a tour at St. Halletts to Matt and another intern friend Ashley. Went to Matts place for an impromtu bbq only to be joined by his Swiss houemates and some backpackers picking nearby vineyards. Not every day you show up to an impromtu bqq only to find a Case of 1998 Cab Shiraz, 6 europeans, the 3 of us americans, great food and some good laughs. Just thankful to be where I am with the experiences gained. Oh, and we used a 1000 ml erlenmeyer flask as a decanter.
March 24th. Mission, finding good beer. Not hard for Matt and I to do. We Found it, at the BierHaus in a town in the hills behind Adelaide. The Brewer was a great guy, we tasted through his lineup, which included a double IPA. Now the Aussie beer (coors/bud equivelent) is equally as bad as it is in the states, only they drink more to their local shitty beer.  The Microbrew scene is just developing, this places being on of the more respecet and In my opinion better locations around. Matt and I are so used to drinking insanly hoppy beers that that is our standard. they are coming around to that here, just not quite as intense as what we are used to. In some ways though they are making a more accessable well rounded beer, not the alcoholic hop water we sometimes used to. In other beer related news, Matt and I are going to brew a black IPA hopefully on tuesday. We cheating slightly by using half extract due to limitations in our soak, but hey, we still going for it. Unfortunally as I write this our ingredients are sitting in the post office which is closed for 4 days due to easter weekend. I know my stuff is there, I just cant get it till tuesday afternoon, bummer.
March 28th: The Harvest Party. Oh Barossa winery parties. The first one I went to killed my phone, so I was mentally prepared and took extra percautions for this one.  For our end of harvest party we all went to the local country club for a friendly round of Golf. Now I like golf, I was pretty pumped on getting to go for a round. I have not yet surfed in Aus, but i sure have played a round of golf. The costume theme for the party was "formal to the waist, the rest in bad taste", it did not matter which "to your waist" was formal and which was in bad taste. I went with more of a tacky golfer look. Each team played the best shot out of their teams hits. so driving, approach, and putting were all played off the best shot for each. that made team oriented and a lot of fun. That and the Winemaker driven beer cart that would come around almost every hole. My team ended up with a bogy on every hole except the last which we got par. Not bad. the winning team was 3 over Par, but also consisted of a lab tech who is from St. Andrews.  Were were bussed back to the winery, where there was pig roasting on a spit, more beer, a bottle of mezcal with a scorpian in the bottom, and a 6 liter bottle of 1998 Old block (so so so good) Dinner of course was great, speeches were given, thanks were given, I recieved the Hose Rose trophy for what my bosses said was for my hard work and positive attitude. My name will forever be engraved onto a homemade trophy sitting at St. Hallett's winery in South Australia. needless to say I Broke a peice of the Trophy off later on... oops. but hey, for that night it was mine to break. And easily fixable peice.  Kareokee, deserts, dancing on the cellar door bar, more wine and Mezcal were consumed until our ride home became our ride home.  Normally I would not post drunken stories onto this Blog for various reasons, and except for one very unfortunate 4th of july incident involving Brennan Davis and a beer pong table, are usually pretty tame in in control. To me this was just to funny not to tell. first off it doesn't involve me persay as the drunk culprit, but another intern. We are being drivin home by one of the winemakers, making a stop at a town opposite mine first. This other intern starts to throw up in the car, I tell the driver to pull over and pick us up on the way back pushing the overly inebriated eployee out the door. it took me all of about 5 seconds to realize that if the winemaker does not come to pick me up, this is going to be a decent walk home. Anyway, the drunken intern is busy stumbling around and "fertilizing"some Orlando vineyards (think of this next time you drink Jacobs Creek people). we get picked up, thankfully, drunken intern has nowhere to stay and he isn't staying with the winemaker, so he gets to stay at my house, yay. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people go out drinking as such without arrangments for a place to say. In hindsight he should have slept in his car. back to my front door im not convinced he is done throwing up, and im not letting him sleep on the nice couches in such a state. so i get a glass of water and we go for a walk. Impatient drunk me decides that drunk intern should do jumping jack's and pushups to relieve any discomfort that his stomach may still have. It worked. And then he slept on the couch. We will head this as a warning that if your drunk ass ever gets put into the very capable yet impatient hands of my drunk ass you probably will end up doing some sort of calesthetic excersise to prevent the potential for throwing up anywhere inside my house.  I think the winemaker just took the pressure washer to the inside of his car. Oh end of Vintage Parties.
March 29th: Hung Over
April 1st. Alyssa (my housemate) turns 23. We made a big brunch consisting of some damn fine bacon/eggs/muffins/fruit most of which was made on the bbq, went tasting at a Small Zin Producer then swam/lounged around at the Lengmeil pool for most of the afternoon. It was also in that Cellar door which we were asked to join the 15 person pyramid. (refer to my facebook album Australia) Also ot sunset we went up to a local lookout for some cheese and bubbles to celebrate another one of us interns leaving to go back to New zealand for harvest. Really just a lovely day.
April 3rd. Matt and I found our way to Adelaide to take a friend to the airport and found a pub run by a couple of beer loving lesbians called the Wheatcheif. This is so far the only place in South Australia we know of where you can get a plethora of american microbrews. we had a pint of some western australian beer called Hop Hog.
April 6th: being today, good friday, nothing is open, Alyssa and I drove up to this local protected area and went on a hike. We saw 4 kangaroos and some nice views. The more and more i look at the local trees and plants the more it looks different from those back home. Maybe i'm noticing the differences more, but they remind me less and less of back home. that brings us to right now. the rest of this weekend for me is going to consist of wine tasting up in the Claire Valley and Down in Mclarenvale. the other two significant wine growing regions in South Australia.
Some other happenings:  Since starting work NOT at 5am like the first 5 weeks for so, but at 7, im comfortably able to ride my bike to work, which I have been doing for the last 3 weeks. thats helping to stay in shape as well as getting that little adrenaline rush in the morning. It makes biking up to the markets that much easier. also seeing as how its my only real form of trasnportation thats kinda of it.  I'm also putting a little bit more muscle back on due to the bike, and as I've said before with the decrease in good beer and fried food, i've lost 10 lbs or so being in this country.  Another thing i've done periodically over the last month or so is drive. Let me remind you that here in australia they drive on the opposite side of the road from what we do back home. so that means just about everything is opposite. It started with me volunteering to be a DD so i could drive and has extended beyond that on a number of occasions. Driving on the opposite side of the road looses its novelty after about 30 seconds, then it just becomes driving. Having now logged somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of driving time, i dont even think twice about pulling onto the correct side of the road. Parents you would be very proud of me that almost all of that driving has been done in manuel cars. Just about the only thing thats not different is the manuel gear box. First is still far left moving twords you, same as it is stateside.  Thats it about now. the only other news is that I borrowed a surfboard and may getting a session in on monday morning or sunday evening, or ideally both. i'll do what i can to stay more on top of my blogs and maybe put some pictures up, but really check out the pictures via my facebook.