The Birds

The sky is still big, blue, and sunny, as it has been almost uniformly since I arrived in New Zealand. The clouds here in Wairarapa can be fascinating; perhaps I'll write a cloud entry sometime.

Today I spent a lot of time pulling nets back over vines. They are in place to keep the birds out, but in most instances are not secured very well, but just flung over the vines. So, a few good gusts of wind (and we had many today), and they flip up, exposing the precious fruit to the birds.

I also chased birds out of nets. Some of the pinot nets span four rows of vines, and those are pegged down along the outer edges, and the ends, where they drape to the gound from the end-posts of the rows, weighed down with logs. But somehow, the birds find a way in. To get them out I opened up both ends, and drove a "quad bike" (the "bi" part of "bike" doesn't seem quite fitting) up and down to chase the birds out. At first I tried chasing them on foot, and opening the canopy when we reached the end, but they never flew out, preferring, while I lifted the net, to flee to the corners, and then turn around and fly back to the beginning.

So, I did some quad driving. Pretty wild. The owner's nine-year-old son has one too, but is much more proficient. But I managed to get those birds out of the way without running into anything. And I gave the dog, who likes to chase the quad and nip at the tires if you drive to slowly, a good workout. I'm a bit worried about running her over, but she seems to have survived so far, and probably knows what she is doing better than I do.

We also topped up wine barrels. Most of the pinot noir harvest from last year is currently in 225 litre oak barrels (mostly from France, but some American). The oak affects the flavour and structure of the wine, and is used in varying degrees by wine makers across the world. But unlike steel tanks, oak breathes, and some of the wine is lost to evaporation (at least, the volatile components do, presumably there are many elements which are concentrated by this process). So wine stored in bottles is used to top up the barrels occasionally.

Actually, I didn't do the topping. I just handed up full bottles, took down empty ones, and cleaned the rubber bungs when they were in need of it. One hundred and sixty-three 750 ml bottles were used to top up about 55 barrels (I think; didn't actually count them while I was there). That means a loss of about 1% of the volume in each barrel over the months since they were last topped.