Working on a Night... Shift.

The night shift has commenced. After a couple of shifts, my feet are a bit sore but otherwise doing good... Ill have to grab a "proper" pair of boots when I hit town next (as my English roomies would say). I was happy to get the night shift because it gave me the days to go to town, on the internet etc., but it does take a little getting used to. After the first night I was only able to get about 4hrs sleep, but managed almost a full "days" after last night, so I am definitely getting adjusted.


With the scope of Yealands production, they need to train people on one specific task to be there "go to" job during harvest. They will have about 2-3 people trained on the task so that they can have a rotation going on. I got given the duty of running the RDV filter. What is an RDV filter you might be asking yourself.... RDV stands for rotary drum vacuum, and the medium that we are using as a filter is diatomaceous earth. The vacuum drum is coated in the diatomaceous earth in a very slow, tedious and dirty process (proper breathing apparatus must be worn), which involves mixing the DE with water in a mixer, then slowly pumping the water through the RDV machine... the drum catches the fine particles and forms an almost clay like substance around the drum. After the DE "cake" is formed, the filtering process begins; slowly pumps lees into the tub that the drum rotates in, the lees are picked up by the rotating drum, and the juice is sucked through the DE. Then, the dirty portion (lees) is scraped off by a blade that is on the apparatus. (Are you getting excited, b/c I know that I am ;) )

This filter is used to separate pressed grape juice from "lees" (pre-fermentation), which are the settled particles (skins, seeds pulp etc) that settle down to the bottom of the tank when the juice is chilled for a couple of days. When you "rack" (remove clear juice off of solids) juice and wine, you are always left with lees on the bottom of the tanks, so this is a way to really extract everything you can, which adds up big time when you will be doing 8000 tonnes this year (roughly 600-700 thousand cases! (they will eventually be doing 15000 tonnes when the vines mature). They are able to get about 70% juice from the total volume of lees, which really adds up.

So, that is the job I will know how to do with a blindfold on within a few days, although, I must admit that training doesn't soak in quite so well at 4:30am... Its not the most exciting task, but that's how things work in harvest at big places. You have to be a team player, and be willing to jump on board and help out to achieve an end goal, which is to have a safe and successful harvest with no mistakes.





This is a shot at 7am after work... interns having a smoke and beers. Beer never tasted so good at 7am, well... its come close before.