Swinging pigeons find no joy...

Dad bought 8 new pigeons a while back. There were three pairs and two single birds. However upon entry to their new home partners were swapped. Well at least one pair broke up. It must be hard for the pigeon(s) which were dumped.... they still have to live in the same house as their old mate(s).

The newly formed pair produced an egg which over Easter hatched. Unfortunately when I looked in on them a few days ago I found the baby pigeon had died. Im assuming this was due to natural causes.

Did you know?

That in Australia the alcohol concentration in wines can be out by 1.5 percent. Meaning a wine stating it is 13.5% alcohol might actually be 15%. In the UK it is only 0.5%.

No rest of the wicked

One of Dads employees said this to me yesterday. I'm stilling trying to work out what I did that was so wicked.

On Thursday I started work at 6:45 am - laying out lugs and supervising the picking.

Next I went to the winery to plunge the must bins. These are half tonne bins full of crushed grapes. Yeast has been added and fermentation has begun. The juice separates from grape skins, so to increase contact between the two to allow pigment extraction from the skins these bins must be plunged three times a day. Initially it is very hard work with the skins cap being 30 cm deep - it can actually push the lid of the bin, but it gets easier during fermentation.

I then had to lay out more lugs, before picking up 108 lugs of Viognier that was picked the day before. Viognier (at least the clone we have) forms very tight bunches, so while a lug of grapes normally weights 15 kg, these weighed more.... tipping them into bins at chest height, while wasn't quite a struggle, wasn't all that easy.

Some people from Canberra came to see to winery and taste the wines. I think they actually expected us to entertained for the whole day. This was never going to happen. For one, we were really busy and secondly Dad was too concerned about their welfare, mainly that of the three very young children who wanted to run around - as kids do. Shouldn't be a problem, but that morning there had been a fatality in a winery, the second in the past two months and we had the harvester, a few tractors and few semi trailers around, so Dad suggested they visit some of the other wineries in the area. Once they left I plunged the bins again.

Then on to picking up the 93 lugs of Cabernet and Merlot* that was picked in the morning. These had to be loaded onto pallets to be stored in the cold-room.

After rearranging the cold room to fit more in, Dad decided we needed to press the Pinot Noir and Gamay I had fermented as we needed to bins for the Cab and Merlot we had just picked. We pressed 2 tonnes into a barrels and tanks.

I plunged the bins once more and measured the sugar levels.

By the time we cleaned up it was 11:30pm and all Id had since breakfast was two cups of tea and a few almonds..... I was starving and it was also absolutely freezing. Boo was also very cold and very hungry. I fed her, put her winter coat on - when she first got it she didn't really like it, but is now grateful for it.

After dinner all I wanted was a relaxing hot shower before bed, but once in the shower I found the huntsman spider who had taken up residence in the bathroom a few weeks back decided Dad's shampoo would be an interesting place to visit. However it didn't take into account the steam from the shower making the shampoo bottle very slippery. The poor spider was desperately grabbing at anything and holding on for dear life. The poor spider. This also didn't result in a very relaxing shower for me**.

The following day I got to sleep in and didn't start working until 8:30! We picked some more grapes, again I just had to lay out lugs and then collect them before loading them on to pallets for the cold room. I picked up nearly 2 tonne of grapes. I must be getting a little stronger.... but the last 20 or so lugs are still difficult.....

After plunging the bins for the second time, Dad said I could have the rest of the day off. However after talking with a few transport companies - he had been trying for three days to get transport for the Viognier, but he couldn't get it - he realised he would have to drive them to Griffith himself and asked me to go along. We left at 7:30pm, got to Griffith by 11pm, left at midnight and got home by 3:30am. Once we left Griffith I drove while Dad slept. Focusing at that time of night was a little difficult, especially because the roads out of Griffith are so long and straight - I would have loved a few turns to focus on. After an hour or so Dad woke up and took over. So much for my evening off.

I had fed Boo before we left but forgot to put her coat on. When we got home I went to see her. She was happy to see me, but couldn't get up, she was too stiff and cold. She was shivering so much I felt awful for not putting her coat on before I left. I helped her warm up and left her to sleep.

And now a few picture from life here....

The lab, (more than) a little different from the other labs I have worked in.

Skin cap raising the lid

Half tonne bins full of grape must

The spider that so kindly joined me for my shower

The cool room is a little full at the moment

One of the harvesters

*Not 100% sure it is Merlot, a lot of Cab Franc was planted in Australia as Merlot. You can no longer get it genetically tested so we aren't quite sure, but they are somewhat similar anyway... just don't mention it, there are some people in the wine industry here that don't want to know about it....

** Either it enjoyed the experience or was deeply traumatized as he was still clutching the shampoo bottle the following afternoon, so before I put it outside before my next shower.

I think it's time to offer some fresh grapes to the rain god....

We have received 66 ml in 2 days. Fantastic. Except if you are trying to harvest the grapes..... I'm working on the vineyard (impersonating a farmer) therefore I'm expected to complain about everything.....

Spiders and snakes

I have a slight issue with redback spiders. I don't particularly like them. And there are a lot of them at the vineyard. They are in the sleeves around the base of the vines. They are in the winery. They are in the lugs. They are even in the grape bunches..... I found 6 when cleaning out the lugs. Unfortunately only 5 ended up like the one circled in the picture below. The 6th made a lucky escape into the lawn. I often mention to Geoff - one of Dads employees - when I find a few. He has started making fun of me. I know no one has died from a redback bite in years, but thats not the point - to me.


Then I told him I saw a brown snake while I was picking up lugs of grapes. It slithered past me. Geoff asked if I jumped 6 rows to get away from it. But I hadn't. I had just watched to see where it was headed so that I could stay out of its way. Geoff was quite surprised. I think I probably have my concerns around the wrong way. People still die from brown snake bites....

A long day

I had to get up yesterday at 6am to start the guys picking grapes. At 2:30am I was still going.....

Have you seen the car that drives in front of huge machinery on the roads with a flashing light, well that was me between 2 and 2:30 this morning. The light is really annoying. I managed to drive correctly - difficult job when I was that tired. But the guy driving behind didn't, he was all over the road. Admittedly they had been working for 48 hours straight and I had only been going for 20 hours.....

And the sacrifice worked, rain fell almost immediately, I should try this more often....

Ok so there was rain clouds in the area, but it was very localised and could have quite easily missed us.

Exhausted

Vintage is.... exhausting. I had been warned, every time Xanthe ran up she asked how I was doing and said I must be exhausted. I wasn't. Then. I am now.

On Thursday and Friday I worked very long days with 5 hours sleep in between, Friday night I drove to Sydney - after a short nap. The reason for the trip was Matt's house-warming. This was a whole day event, starting with a breakfast BBQ, followed by a day at the races - as his place isn't overly spacious and another BBQ and a few drinks in the evening.

After a few hours at the races and a feed I decided I was in desperate need of some sleep. I asked to be woken in half an hour. 4 hours later I get up. Matt had tried to wake me numerous times, but finally gave up after I mumbled something which was likely meant for my father, thinking I was at the vineyard.....

The next day I drove back to the farm. It was a lovely weekend, but really didn't let me get the rest I required to face another week.

I just want to sleep but it seems the grapes aren't listening to my pleas and the harvest continues... physical work, I'm just not used to it.

Harvest update

During February the temperatures were a lot cooler than normal, more like March temperatures. This was great for us as the grapes produce lots of flavour when the nights start to get cool. The day time temperatures were also prefect, approximately mid 20ies. However this dream weather all changed with the coming of March. The temps now are more like Jan/Feb and this is bad news.

I sampled some Pinot Noir and found the sugar levels suddenly really high. So we decided to pick them. Unfortunately the guys who pick weren't available on Friday so we put it off til Monday. Over the weekend the temperatures continued to be really high and by Monday the fruit was really shriveled. We still picked some of it as the flavours are lovely.

Today we picked some Shiraz which was also starting to shrivel. We were going to sell it to a winery but there have been a few difficulties with transport, every man and his dog with a vineyard needs to harvest in our region at the moment..... so we are going to make it into some wine ourselves as we can't get it to the winery.

So now I get to have some fun and make some wine! We crushed the Pinot Noir and some Gamay today, its now in half tonne bins in the cold room. I can see already this wine making business is going to give me an upper body work out, mixing sulfur and tartaric acid through the crushed grapes was not as easy as I suspected.

We are going to crush the Shiraz in a few days. Hopefully the machine harvester will be here tomorrow night and then we will need to hand pick the grapes for Dads wine. Busy busy busy. The number of days I see the sunrise is scaring me....

Riesling

Chardonay...

And here is one I prepared earlier...

too much work on to take any decent photos, so here is one from NYE a few years back....

8.4 tonnes of white grapes

Should produce a couple of bottles of white for me to enjoy!

More harvest photos....

Harvest

I'm exhausted. I spent the day supervising 13 people picking grapes. This may sound better than picking the grapes, but let me tell you it is not! I had to make sure everyone was picking the right grapes - ok so thats easy, I also had to distribute the lugs (large plastic crates used to hold the grapes) - also not too difficult, except that to be able to distribute lugs to be filled they must first be emptied, so I had to empty the lugs, containing 15-20 kg of grapes into bins. They picked around 300 lugs. My arms are going to kill me tomorrow. And to make matters worse I have to do it all over again in the morning, except that some of the pickers want to start a little earlier tomorrow so I have to be at the winery by 6:15am.... that is going to hurt.

To make matters worse I thought we were only hand harvesting the whites, but Dad told me today that we will also hand harvest the Rondinella and Corvina also.... excellent.

On the up side I'm getting lots of exercise!

Dad also wanted to me to photograph the day. Surprisingly enough I didn't find the time!

Setting out lugs, just as the sun is rising....
A lug full of pinot gris- that I picked and photographed after everyone else had gone home.

Ummm.... piont gris