My First Week....so far

Hello All!!!
well i finished my first week and we have the first grapes in the door. Not sure if i included everyone i work with so i'll go though them again. There is Simon the head winemaker, a kiwi( aka New Zealander), Jonny the assistant winemaker hilarious stereotype of a surfer kiwi, chris a kiwi that doesn't even like wine but wants to learn, Mike from scotland with a great accent and no expreince but a hard worker, andrea my new buddy she is from chile, romain a frenchman, ivan from italy who is having the hardest time with english but its coming along, and izaac from oregon. Had a little chat with jonny lastnight and he is very excited about the crew this year, we all get along very well and thats important for this job, relying on each others and having a good time. well back to the first week of harvest, mostly cleaning but we started the real fun yesterday afternoon, its friday here by the way, i think this blog thing posts on the wrong day and i can't figure out how to fix it. Things were a little bumpy and we had to do a little improvisation to make things work but it was fine. the winery still isn't 100% complete yet, electricians and welders still finishing up a few last things. its amazing, i guess the company was going for the most technologically advance winery in New Zealand, so many little bells and whistles...huge rotating hopper to feed the crusher, "6 pack" must chiller to cool the fruit before its sent to fermentation, 6 in SS must lines, SS transfer lines everywhere, tanks are all hooked up to the computer so we can monitor everything, lots of cool new lab equipment... its a lot of fun leaning how to use new technology.
did a lot more grape sampling....walking for miles and miles though the vineyards... its kind of boring and its hard to get good samples... say these a block of pinot noir that is 50 acres, i have to pick 20 clusters to represent the entire thing, don't know if its possible...a little frustrating at times but i'm still learning the best way to do it. then i have to go back and weigh everything to get a average cluster weight....which is really low this year, about a 1/2 to a 1/3 of usually because of really cold weather in dec/jan during when the fruit was setting. we thought we were going to get about 1000 tonnes this year but looks more like 700 tonnes (tonnes = metric ton = 2.2 tons, for all that are wondering) which is good because its the first year and it might be nice to work out any kinks with smaller lots. after i get the weight andrea or myself will get brix, pH, TA.
well last night we crushed the first friut, about 2 tonnes of Pinot noir from across the street @ the Mound vineyards....came in a little low in sugar (which we can fix) but acids where spot on and flavors are great....very exciting. fit it all in one bin and had a little trouble fork lifting it in to the winery, 3 guys had to hop on the back to keep the back wheels down, wish i had my camera for that. after a little more clean up we cracked open a few cold ones and toasted the beginning of harvest!!! hung out in the lab drinking a while and also outside with the vineyard crew. then back to the hostel for some food (9ish and starving) then shower and to a pub, but we were all exhausted so that didn't last long.
i have to work on sunday for a litte to pick more samples, still have 3/4 of the pinot at the mound that is looking really close, so i think we should have lots of pinot coming in this week, heard perhaps 3 lots a day from central down south.
The hostel is fun and all, i've met so many "unique" people, expecially the Israelis, they have some crazy storys about back home but its costing us too much!!! we went and looked at a house onthursday which is really run down, its actually comically run down, but for $45-50 a week its the best we could find that will rent for 2 months, but since we will be working different shift we'll have to get 2 cars i think...so thats going to be expensive and stressful to sell in the end. well i'm going to go do a little shopping, set up a bank account so i can get paid and try to find a place to get a SIM card from my phone so i can make calls here and short calls home, and someone said theres a $10 1000 text message thing, so i might get that and use that to communicate. hope all is well back where you are and keep the comments coming!!!