Some video of Central Otago Fruit being dumped into the receival bins... 10k kilos total being dumped.

Quick Harvest for Marlborough

vineyards at yealands




It seems the Harvest is over before it began. The vines are changing colors and the leaves are falling. Its full blown Autumn down here now. All of the grapes on Yealands 1000 Hectares have been in for about 7 or 8 days now, with the last being harvested around the 23rdish of April. Yealands is located in the Awatere Valley, which is a cooler area of Marlborough which tends to "ripen" later. A gentleman working the cellar door at Dry Hills in Blenheim (the "heart" of Marlborough) said it was one of the shortest vintages in his memory, although I have no idea of how good his memory is.


vineyards @ dry hills

With that being said, there is obviously a lack of grape and juice related tasks to complete in the cellar. Yes, no more lees filtering either as of today. So, that means lots of cleaning. Its a full blown cleaning party at Yealands, and tonight may be the pinnacle being that there is absolutely NOTHING to do other than clean in the cellar.... if I am lucky there may be a racking to perform. We'll be scrubbing to the soothing sounds of techno music probably, courtesy of local guy Bob, who has worked the crushpad this vintage and loves his techno. Well, wine making is 90% cleaning as they say, but its the scope of the winery that takes this cleaning to the next level.

Fortunately we will have some pinot coming in over the next 5 days or so, so there will be a bit more grape related work to perform. Also, as the fermentations progress and finish, there will again be more wine related work to perform. So, for now, we clean. Cheers.


Yealands Estates

Family Style Dinner

I had a chance to sit down to a family style dinner with some friends of a friend whom I work with at Yealands. Everyone at dinner works vintage down here in Marlborough, and they all like food and wine. There were a few guys from Italy, and a few California boys (Santa Cruz, San Diego). We got a chance to do some serious wine tasting, with the star of the night being Stonecroft Hawkes Bay Syrah, which had some nice peppery cool climate components to it.

In my biological warfare mask ready to play with some D.E.

Fresh "cake" on the RDV, ready for filtering some lees.


All the fruit from the estate has come in. There was a total of 7000-8000 tonnes that came in, which is about 2000 tonnes short of what was predicted. As a result, Yealands purchased about 500 tonnes of fruit, and may end up purchasing additional fruit to meet their production totals. Word is that there is a lot of excess fruit in the Marlborough marketplace (as a result of over planting and folks without contracts to sell their fruit), so they have not had any problems finding the fruit. Yealands is also processing some fruit for other wineries. This is typically referred to as crushing/custom crush, and is done quite a bit in the industry. We are not exactly a "custom crush", but with the size of the winery there was an opportunity to fill up some tanks to make some $$$$. After all, it is all about cash flow, isn't it?

first bin of pinot ready to get crushed and destemmed. This bin can handle 20 tonnes of fruit at a time! It literally gets dropped/dumped off by the truckload.



Things have slowed down a bit; we are now getting 2 days off a week, and the shifts will cut back to 9 hours. This is turning out to be a very short vintage, and they will start to cut staff in about 1-2weeks. I am hoping to stay on board until the 20th of May, which may be a bit of wishful thinking. I am spending all of my time on the RDV which is getting old, but we will only be running it for about 1-2 more weeks. At that point, all of the white grapes will be fermenting or finished fermenting, and we will be working with reds only. We actually took in our first Pinot about 10 days ago, but it is for other wineries. This is a very small portion of the production, with 75% of production being exclusively Sauvignon Blanc, and then there is Pinot Gris, Gewurtz, Viogner and Reising too. Yealands will be purchasing their pinot fruit from Central Otago, which is regarded as one of the best pinot growing regions in NZ.
A truck waiting to unload mechanically harvested fruit at sunrise.


sunrise from Yealands.

Seddon

Here are some pics from my current "hometown" Seddon. There is not much going on in this "town", but we did have some nice sunsets about a week ago.



Sunset across the street from the house.



Here is a pic of the current living quarters from the outside.




colorful sunset in Seddon.

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.

Internet Problems...

Hi All,
This is a guest post from Amanda (Taron's girlfriend for those of you who don't know). The internet has been having problems so Taron hasn't been able to update the blog or upload all his pictures lately, he asked me to post this note so people didn't begin to wonder.

I've talked to him a few times, he is working very hard and having a great time! Expect some updates tomorrow or the next.

X
Amanda