Many apologies for the lack of new posts in the past week. From leaving the relative metropolis of Christchurch and arriving in Renwick I've had no access to the world wide web. A brief run down on the week: Started work on the Monday with about 15 other cellar hands, a good group of people from a range of wine producing nations, Chile, Spain, Italy and Australia. The varying degrees of experience meant that for the first few days we were going through the basics, cleaning tanks and having safety briefings.
The winery is jointly owned by Babich, Matua Vally and the New Zealand Wine Fund. The labels produced are : Matua Vally, Babich, Vavasour, Goldwater, Shingle Peak, Sacred Stone and a few others. This year it is estimated that we will be processing 11,000 tonnes of grapes. In order to do this the winery operates 24hours a day which means two 12hour shifts per day, the day and night shift. I've been put on the night shift working 7pm to 7am and will be focused on the grape recieval area. This job deals with receiving the grapes from the lorries that back up and tip their cargo of grapes into large 20 tonne stainless steel bins. The bins are then slowly tipped up allowing the grapes to be driven into the destemmer. The destemmer is a machine that crushes the grapes and removes the stems, twigs, leaves and any solid objects other than grapes. The mushed up grapes then get sent into large presses. The presses operate by holding all the grapes in a large cylinder and then inflating a bag inside, gently pushing the grapes together and squeezing the remaining juice through side drains where it is pumped into tanks.
OK, so if you followed that, thats where i will be working. I will endeavour to leave you regular updates on the progress of the vintage.
Emerson's Pilsner
this golden tinged pilsner comes with a flowering of gorgeous bubbles that lift a refreshing lemon, lime and honey onto the pallet. this is all set against a backdrop of hoppy bitterness. on a warm Canterbury afternoon the clean and refreshing palette ensures you can never drink just one. Drink this beer when ever you can.
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