Holidays and so....

For the first time during our studies here in Blenheim, we are able to enjoy a bit of a holiday. However, when you work in the wine industry 'holiday' is close to non-existent, especially during vintage. The planning of this break could therefore have been better. Since my 'partners in crime' were out of town/country for a while, I was on my own monitoring our two drums of red wine - our rose and our three individual whites. So, every day I go to school around 10am to check the levels of sugar in the whites, that are in the middle of fermentation (in short: that's the conversion of sugars into alcohol with the help of yeast).When the sugar level is at the desired level you have to stop the fermentation or when fermentation get stuck, you have to take action and get the process going again. Our red juice/wine is in malo-lactic fermentation at the moment, meaning that malic acid is 'turned into' lactic acid. Halfway we checked the several acid levels and had to conclude that the acidity was not at high enough level to produce a good wine. So, here comes the (future) winemaker in view to 'fix' problems in time to make an agreeable product in the bottle.


Earlier this week the student association had raised the issue of the lack of living allowances for all students and were running a 'soup kitchen' at the campus. This attracted interest from the media and led to an article in the Marlborough Express under the heading: "Students say grades suffer from debt". Following is part from this article:
"Anita Van Hofwegen said she wanted to do a further year of study, but was unsure whether she could because of the impact it would have on her loan. "I can't life off the student loan and can't get the student allowance so I have to work as well as doing my course. Having to work has definitely affected my grades," she said".
Until now - apart from the scholarship from the Marlborough Wine Growers - I have not received any further sponsorships.

Since I am around Blenheim a bit during holiday and work has slowed down, I take the time to work on some of my assignments and do some catch-up reading for the upcoming weeks and on my special subject: "Organics and Bio-Dynamics". Furthermore, we have to start pruning in a few weeks time and this is supposed to be physically pretty hard work. We have been warned to start with some stretching excercises and to be sure we are fit. Since my body is already a bit older than 20-25 years it really is necessary to get my body in good condition and therefore I started going to the gym. I will only be able to do this for a short time (budget) and then I have to keep fit with the vineyard work itself.

As you will probably understand, I am a bit busy and today I have even been working with my hands in the cow poo!!......... but more about that next time when I have some pictures to go with that. Now, I am heading to Wellington for a short break.


Cheers,

Anita

Life between the grapes

Since a few weeks the vintage here in Marlborough is in 'full swing'. This means that nearly everyone is involved with something in the wine industry at the moment. The grapes are being picked and processed and with the rain of the last week the picking has become an urgent matter for most vineyards. The grapes were nearly ripe and the rain is causing all kind of problems with diseases at this stage and loss of flavours. So everyone wants to harvest at the same moment and the region is bustling and the roads are full of machine harvesters and trucks that are passing through town.

Last Sunday Blenheim even made it to the National Radio News with the following message: "In Blenheim the roads are dangerous because of the grapes that fall of the trucks at roundabouts and corners. Everyone who notices a truck that loses grapes needs to report the registration number to the police."

At school the excitement around the grapes isn't anything less. We have started making our own wines in small groups. I am very lucky to be making the wine with two great people: Hiro, a Japanese guy from Tokyo and Anya, a Russian lady from Moscow. We have picked Pinot Noir grapes and are processing these into a nice full-bodied flavoured red wine and a lighter and easy drinkable Pinot Noir Rose. Apart from that we have picked Sauvignon Blanc grapes which we are processing individually into a typical Marlborough white wine. We are convinced that our products will be drinkable (but upto now only we are convinced) and are thinking about our brand and marketing strategy already while we are busy with the winemaking processes. Unfortunately, everyone has to wait for a few more months before our product will be bottled and ready for the market.


To give you a glimpse of what we are doing, I have attached two picture. In the first picture you see Anya and Hiro who are inoculating our red grapes with yeast. The yeast is needed to convert the sugars in the juice into alcohol and thus making the wine out of the grape juice. This process needs to be monitored daily. In the second picture you see them with busy doing 'whole bunch pressing' of our Sauvignon Blanc harvest.

In between our work in the school winery processing our wines, we also had to do our first progress assessment (Computing) and a test (Viticulture) while we had to prepare some written reports (Science) as well. Needless to say that we are busy students.

Last week Marco visited me in Blenheim and joined me during the presentation of the scholarship. This was a pretty straight forward ceremony with hardly any attention from the outside world, which was a bit disappointing. But I received a nice certificate from Wine Marlborough the sponsor of this scholarship. To celebrate my scholarship we have had lunch at one of the wineries and did a small wine tasting tour in the afternoon.

The next day we have been doing a bit more of winetasting together with a few of my classmates, which also was a very enjoyable afternoon. Below you can see the view from the tower of Highfield Estate.

Unfortunately, on Saturday I had to work but overall we had an enjoyable weekend and I even think that Marco liked it better over here than in Wellington. On Sunday I brought him back to the airport and went to school to monitor our wines.

Cheers,

Anita