Friday 4/16

nightime mechanical harvesters in action

Tonight's shift will be day 11 of harvest for me. I had last night off, which was a much needed break in the schedule, and a chance to get some good rest. I stayed off of my feet and watched the local TV, which had some American shows like southpark, cops and Friday night lights... then as it got later and nothing was on I ended up watching the local "super dog" competition from the mid 90z (at least it looked like it), with some not so well trained dogs doing relays. It was also the first time that I have drank any wine since I started, which is probably the longest "drought" in years. I ended up getting a cheeseburger and fries for dinner (a nice break from my daily potatoes, sausage and eggs meal), and paired it with a bottle of Penfolds Cab/Shiraz (flat and forgettable but enjoyable after the second glass) from the Seddon market which has a very small wine selection. For my next night off I will be purchasing wine from the market in Blenheim, which has a very nice wine section of kiwi wines. The weather over the last few days has varied from sunny but cool and windy to overcast/light rain and windy, with most of the weather falling in the sunny category. Yesterday was very windy, with gusts around 30mph.... its a very rough growing region out here. Temperature has been around the mid 60z-high60z/low 70z. Last week we actually had a little bit of frost at night, but it has warmed up at night over the last 5 days or so. The rain is never good for grapes at this point of the year, but it hasn't been enough to cause any damage. The mechanical harvesters have been running throughout the night, and the grapes have been coming in around the clock. For the last few days Yealands has processed 600-700 tonnes daily. At some points in the night, trucks have had to wait up to two hours to unload their grapes. With more fruit coming in there are more things going on in the cellar: more RDV filtering (we fired up the big RDV, so now there are 2 going), inoculations, additions, rackings, punchdowns, pumpovers, and of course, cleaning. My time has been consumed by the RDV. I actually get quite a bit of walking in with the RDV's because they are on the opposite ends of the cellar. They are about 180 steps away from each other, and I probably make the round trip about 30 times a night... so, I think I am walking about 5-6 miles a night in the cellar, plus frequent trips up to the catwalk (the walkway above the tanks), which can be quite high at times. I figure its enough walking to burn off the burger and chips and then some.