First Day

The vineyard work has begun! Having spent a bit more than a week in Wellington and Christchurch with relatives (aunt/uncle and gradpa, respectively), I have relocated to the Wairarapa, in the South-Eastern part of the North Island. My comfortable and colorful room in the house of the winemaker and his family looks out across the vineyards (specifically, some pinot gris), to the distant hills.

My first work day began with a bit of cleaning in the winery, followed by collecting samples of grapes from various blocks so that they could be tested for ripeness---the amount of sugar is measured (in brix) by testing the buoyancy of a hollow glass bubble; the pH measured with a meter, and the amount of titratable acid by titration. I picked some Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay, and crushed the samples by hand in a bucket.

Pinot Noir grapes are quite small and deep purple in colour, not unlike blueberries. The bunches are tightly packed. Sauvignon Blanc look quite like green table grapes, though slightly smaller and less uniform in size. The Chardonnay grapes are significantly smaller, and, like the Pinot, tightly bunched. Many of the bunches have been browned by the sun on the owtward-facing side---the foliage on these vines had been trimmed back more than on the SB.

After sampling, I joined the rest of the picking team picking Pinot Noir. They were a friendly group, making the work (which was tiring but not exhausting) go quickly. Picking was conducted in a leap-frog style, each worker doing a section, and then jumping ahead to the front of the row, and the grapes are put into plastic crates. These, when full, were left under the vines to be picked up and dumped into larger bins. With a pallet-jack (operated by me with some difficulty) and a forklift (not driven by me) the grape bins were moved into a large refridgerated container for the night.