Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
so long Waipara Hills Winery!
well friday was the last day at work. we worked about half a day, mostly cleaning up and warming a few sluggish ferms... but after we had a nice little party. had a few beers, pepperoni and stinky cheeses, wine, then we had a great match of soccer... italy verses france... i was on team italy. quiet funny considering all of us are pretty out of shape for running around and about 1/2 of us didn't know soccer too well...beer breaks intermittently and plenty of substitutions but i actually managed to score a goal off a great assist. the game finished when the steaks on the bbq were finished, with a final score france 5, italy 4... but it was a close on at the end. after devouring steaks, sausages....and more drinks we filled up one of the 5 thousand liter tanks with hot water and made ourselves a nice little hot tub...(is that legal?!?!!!) it was so hot, about 40 degrees C, what ever that is.
after the dip we made plans to rendezvous back at 0ur house for a little house party, which turned out to be a great time....really reminded me of a college party, lots of beer, booze, card games, other drinking games, passing the apple around, singing, dancing, pissing off the brazilian, all great things... i guess at one point jonny and i decided we were going to play kings cup, a drinking game with cards which each card is a different rule, so jonny and i sat down and set up the rules of the game... a battle of the minds, 30 minutes later they had to come find us and we only had about half the rules... what a fun guy. him and his fiance invited me up to their wedding in ptown in august, so thats pretty cool. i crashed a little early but i guess the party still went on for a while...at some point jonny made a delicious (ha?!?!!!!) stew of sausages and oranges, ya looked like someone throw up in a pot and left it for me to find in the morning when i cleaned up. saturday we planned a night out on the town. spent the afternoon doing a little shopping in christchurch, randomly met up with romain downtown and him and i went for a little stroll around the botanical gardens passing the time till we were supposed to meet everyone at the dux de lux, a groovy brew pub that makes some decent beer. had a couple pitchers of beer, including a very interesting ginger beer, tasted exactly like pickled ginger like you get at sushi places...but with alcohol!!!! afterwords we headed out to a little irish pub with pool called micky finns....where i think i dropped quiet a bit of money...in the 3 digits. but we had a great time and the band was great, a 90s covered band so lots of singing along and dancing. should have stayed there but headed off to a belgium bar to meet up with mike but ended up missing him...but met probably the hottest bartender ever, a young rosario dawson, jonny was they hard to get me a date, it was funny, have a great picture of her holding a huge beer for me....yumm hoegaarden. and sampled a little traditional belgium bar faire....little fried balls of meat... or should i say hot lava because thats what it felt like...burnt my month pretty bad. headed out late for some fast food...first mcdonalds since i have arrived in NZ. and took bus back to jonnys for some movies and chilling out, way out....woke up curled up on a love seat and looked over and saw laurent, romain and ivan all sleeping on the couch next to me... some kind of italian sandwich with french bread....get it cause laurent and romain r french and ivan is italian....ha ha ha i kill myself.
anyways last night we moved out of our place... headed back to the hostel we were staying at before to move in but what do you know.....all full for the night, so we spent another night over at jonnys....much quieter night. they all had to work in the morning. lucky me got to spend the day doing laundry and moving into the backpacker, reuniting with the staff and just relaxing... so happy just to relax and do nothing, good thing i got a week of this planned.
take care all!!! miss ya!!!!
after the dip we made plans to rendezvous back at 0ur house for a little house party, which turned out to be a great time....really reminded me of a college party, lots of beer, booze, card games, other drinking games, passing the apple around, singing, dancing, pissing off the brazilian, all great things... i guess at one point jonny and i decided we were going to play kings cup, a drinking game with cards which each card is a different rule, so jonny and i sat down and set up the rules of the game... a battle of the minds, 30 minutes later they had to come find us and we only had about half the rules... what a fun guy. him and his fiance invited me up to their wedding in ptown in august, so thats pretty cool. i crashed a little early but i guess the party still went on for a while...at some point jonny made a delicious (ha?!?!!!!) stew of sausages and oranges, ya looked like someone throw up in a pot and left it for me to find in the morning when i cleaned up. saturday we planned a night out on the town. spent the afternoon doing a little shopping in christchurch, randomly met up with romain downtown and him and i went for a little stroll around the botanical gardens passing the time till we were supposed to meet everyone at the dux de lux, a groovy brew pub that makes some decent beer. had a couple pitchers of beer, including a very interesting ginger beer, tasted exactly like pickled ginger like you get at sushi places...but with alcohol!!!! afterwords we headed out to a little irish pub with pool called micky finns....where i think i dropped quiet a bit of money...in the 3 digits. but we had a great time and the band was great, a 90s covered band so lots of singing along and dancing. should have stayed there but headed off to a belgium bar to meet up with mike but ended up missing him...but met probably the hottest bartender ever, a young rosario dawson, jonny was they hard to get me a date, it was funny, have a great picture of her holding a huge beer for me....yumm hoegaarden. and sampled a little traditional belgium bar faire....little fried balls of meat... or should i say hot lava because thats what it felt like...burnt my month pretty bad. headed out late for some fast food...first mcdonalds since i have arrived in NZ. and took bus back to jonnys for some movies and chilling out, way out....woke up curled up on a love seat and looked over and saw laurent, romain and ivan all sleeping on the couch next to me... some kind of italian sandwich with french bread....get it cause laurent and romain r french and ivan is italian....ha ha ha i kill myself.
anyways last night we moved out of our place... headed back to the hostel we were staying at before to move in but what do you know.....all full for the night, so we spent another night over at jonnys....much quieter night. they all had to work in the morning. lucky me got to spend the day doing laundry and moving into the backpacker, reuniting with the staff and just relaxing... so happy just to relax and do nothing, good thing i got a week of this planned.
take care all!!! miss ya!!!!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
good news but bad news...
sounds like maybe only a couple more weeks of work and then we aren't sure whats going to happen... a few of us really want to go travel together and just unwind, party it up and get routey....no more of this getting home at 7am and drinking till 9 then passing out...its too weird drinking in the morning, i mean we just got off a long shift and are all wound up and need a few drinks but its just weird, i feel like i'm doing something really wrong watching morning cartoons and drinking beers with a bowl of corn flakes. ha
so i'm not sure what to do now... not sure i made enough money to travel till june... but then again i'm yound and thats what credit cards are for! and a bonus is my visa is good for another like 10 and a half months... i could always come back and travel and work a little more. darn neil had to have is wedding in july...i might have considered just staying here for a few more months if i didn't have to be back for that! just kidding. but i really am thinking about coming back... i really want to see the summer here, its starting to get really cold and i can't only imagine what its going to be like in a few weeks with winter coming... not the best time to go sight seeing and traveling.
welp gotta run.....presses to clean!!! miss y'all!!
so i'm not sure what to do now... not sure i made enough money to travel till june... but then again i'm yound and thats what credit cards are for! and a bonus is my visa is good for another like 10 and a half months... i could always come back and travel and work a little more. darn neil had to have is wedding in july...i might have considered just staying here for a few more months if i didn't have to be back for that! just kidding. but i really am thinking about coming back... i really want to see the summer here, its starting to get really cold and i can't only imagine what its going to be like in a few weeks with winter coming... not the best time to go sight seeing and traveling.
welp gotta run.....presses to clean!!! miss y'all!!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
yawn!!!
well i didn't get off till about 8ish this morning...went down to a cafe in amberly after for a little breakfast then back home to bed...didn't even feel like i was asleep for more than an hour, one of those head hit the pillow and all of a sudden my alarm is going off. had to be back ready for another long night at 4pm. i can feel the coffee coursing through my veins but i am still in a fog of tiredness. i need a weekend...bad. a couple days would do wonders, a day to catch up with laundry, some shopping and a night out and another just to do nothing and relax.
more whtie pressing today, more reisling and pinot gris...and pressing off reds, got to shoveled out my little pet tank today...i call her donna. inside joke, so when the wine is fermenting, everyday you punch down, or plunge as they call it here, the cap that forms from the skins all floating to the top, like i said before all the good stuff is in the skins so about 4 times a day we punch down, by hand, with what looks like big toilet plungers, the cap down into the fermenting wine below to help extract all the goodness....well a few days into the fermentation its super hard to punch down, you could literally stand on top of the cap. well its nice to give them a name to help let out your frustration....thus donna, not sure why donna but it just worked. and not to sound too inappropriate but it helps to get a couple guys plunging one tank at the same time.
anyways gotta run, pinot gris is ready to be loaded into a press....yea!! that means at least 4 more hours!!!! and its like only 12:30am.
more whtie pressing today, more reisling and pinot gris...and pressing off reds, got to shoveled out my little pet tank today...i call her donna. inside joke, so when the wine is fermenting, everyday you punch down, or plunge as they call it here, the cap that forms from the skins all floating to the top, like i said before all the good stuff is in the skins so about 4 times a day we punch down, by hand, with what looks like big toilet plungers, the cap down into the fermenting wine below to help extract all the goodness....well a few days into the fermentation its super hard to punch down, you could literally stand on top of the cap. well its nice to give them a name to help let out your frustration....thus donna, not sure why donna but it just worked. and not to sound too inappropriate but it helps to get a couple guys plunging one tank at the same time.
anyways gotta run, pinot gris is ready to be loaded into a press....yea!! that means at least 4 more hours!!!! and its like only 12:30am.
Monday, April 16, 2007
work work work
work is going along smoothly....its 4:30 am and i should be off soon, yeah!!! starting to bring in lots of Riesling... i feel like the end is in sight though, a little sad but a relief. still working very long hours and its starting to take its toll on everyone even more... lots of sore backs, bruises, blisters and my wrists are killing me and everyones hands are dyed red/purple from the pinot noir we have been pressing off...which turns a nice black color by morning, looks like mechanic hands.
got the chance, ha, to shovel out my first tank of red skins the other night! not 40 tons like at VOM but still it was about 5 and it was only me doing it... what a work out, i wonder if you can taste the sweat in the wine....hehehe, ya i know gross. maybe i should explain... with red wines you basically squish the grapes and put them in a big tank and the fermentation takes place with the skins which is where all the color and tannins come from, most red grape juice is very light red, its actually where you get rose wines from, the red grape juice fermented with no skins. white wines are only the juice of the grapes is fermented. anyways... once a red wine fermentation is complete you drain off the new wine and all the skins remain in the take and a lucky person get to shovel them out through the little door in the front....oh yeah and you get to crawl in through a little door too, or just in the top like crazy romain did...it was funny, slid in up to his waist, i always feel like i'm going to get stuck in the door, i barely fit.
so thats what we have been up to...i need a day off, i'm tired
got the chance, ha, to shovel out my first tank of red skins the other night! not 40 tons like at VOM but still it was about 5 and it was only me doing it... what a work out, i wonder if you can taste the sweat in the wine....hehehe, ya i know gross. maybe i should explain... with red wines you basically squish the grapes and put them in a big tank and the fermentation takes place with the skins which is where all the color and tannins come from, most red grape juice is very light red, its actually where you get rose wines from, the red grape juice fermented with no skins. white wines are only the juice of the grapes is fermented. anyways... once a red wine fermentation is complete you drain off the new wine and all the skins remain in the take and a lucky person get to shovel them out through the little door in the front....oh yeah and you get to crawl in through a little door too, or just in the top like crazy romain did...it was funny, slid in up to his waist, i always feel like i'm going to get stuck in the door, i barely fit.
so thats what we have been up to...i need a day off, i'm tired
Friday, April 06, 2007
what a long week!!!
sorry for not posting in a while. seriously haven't had much time off to really sit down at a computer. work in going good, things are really starting to pick up and seems like there isn't a second of down time. so much for 12 hour shifts! was at work the other day for about 16 and a half....starting at about 4 pm working till 8-9am , can't remember, really taking a toll on the crew, moral is a little down for us night crew, we work all night getting our work done and when the other crew arrives in the morning they ask about how the mess they left isn't cleaned up yet....whatever.
theres a few tanks of sauvy (sauv. blanc) fermenting to the winery smells great, very tropical fruit like and a few of the pinot noirs are finishing and always get a great strawberry candys aroma as you walk by the bins. also have a few riesliings in house now, but those are just cold soaking, we'll see in a few days if those are as nice....
starting to rain this morning just as we were getting off at 5:30 am and hasn't stopped, so we might have a hell of a week coming up, rain means a quick harvest and we have a couple hundred tons of riesling that might come in all at once.
don't really have time for a life outside of work...so no updates there, get off work, go home, have a beer or not, then sleep, get up, go to work, rince and repeat... at least today we got up a little early and hit up a little brew pub just down the road for a little brunch and some great beers, finally had a real beer, an IPA...have only been drinking the cheap stuff, which is the same as the cheap stuff back home... remember the shmitts brian? ya, that good!
take care all and miss ya!!!
theres a few tanks of sauvy (sauv. blanc) fermenting to the winery smells great, very tropical fruit like and a few of the pinot noirs are finishing and always get a great strawberry candys aroma as you walk by the bins. also have a few riesliings in house now, but those are just cold soaking, we'll see in a few days if those are as nice....
starting to rain this morning just as we were getting off at 5:30 am and hasn't stopped, so we might have a hell of a week coming up, rain means a quick harvest and we have a couple hundred tons of riesling that might come in all at once.
don't really have time for a life outside of work...so no updates there, get off work, go home, have a beer or not, then sleep, get up, go to work, rince and repeat... at least today we got up a little early and hit up a little brew pub just down the road for a little brunch and some great beers, finally had a real beer, an IPA...have only been drinking the cheap stuff, which is the same as the cheap stuff back home... remember the shmitts brian? ya, that good!
take care all and miss ya!!!
Sunday, April 01, 2007
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