Study time!

The weather has been great for a few weeks and I took some time to explore another part of the Wither Hills walkway on a Saturday (this is next to Blenheim). Since it was a bit chilly in the morning I went dressed in jeans and jumper, but I seemed to be the odd one out (as usual). The kiwis were all dressed in shorts and shirts and were walking/running on the paths. What a sportive bunch of people they are! I was jealous and will think of this next time I head to the hills. Up to now the only place I run a bit is in the gym; I am getting into some kind of a routine by now and the condition is absolutely improving.

The week was spent with the usual school attendance and assignment writing and finally I finished them all and am ready for the last bit of study before the exams.

But first Marco had planned another trip to sunny Blenheim. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast when he arrived (but still much better weather here than where he left 15 minutes earlier!). He had a big surprise for me – being a Hurricanes Jersey.

The jersey worn by the Wellington Region Rugby team, that I cheered to the semi-finals earlier in Wellington. They had to play their biggest rivals this weekend. So, I wore the new jersey and we went to the pub, but it turned out to be a bad evening. The Hurricanes lost with high numbers. It was like the indoor soccer match with the classmates earlier on. We do our best, but it just is not good enough.

We have spent the rest of the weekend touring around the wineries for a bit again and driving the Queen Charlotte Drive. This is a beautiful road along the Queen Charlotte Sound on the northern tip of the South Island between Havelock and Picton.

The weekend flew by and before I knew Marco was on the plane back home and school started again. Back into the routine (last week of this semester).

Unfortunately, we are experiencing some problems with one of the lots of our Pinot Noir. This has developed a growth of bacteria, that is spoiling the taste of the wine and we are with help of the tutors trying to solve the problem and figuring out what has happened.

I also managed to find myself a job again. I am supervising the school library a view hours in the week, so the library can be open longer hours for the students. It does not bring in a lot of money, but it is easy work and most of the time I can do some reading and studying, so not bad at all.

Back to study now – catch you later,

Anita

Back and Forth

Welly to Blenheim
My trip on the ferry back ‘home’ was great again, although cold. When I finally arrived back in Blenheim after my ‘holiday’ in Wellington, luckily I had some nice ‘events’ to look forward to.

Blenheim
The same evening I played indoor soccer with the classmates (most of them half my age), but fortunately I scored a goal, yes, grandma is still a little bit in shape. But I did not play a lot during the game, because I thought it would be better to leave most of the time to the youngsters.

I had a nice meeting with a journalist from The Netherlands and his girlfriend who are having a trip of half a year around New Zealand while they try to work a bit at the same time as well. They met me in the school winery and from there we went into town and out to a winery to do some wine tasting. After some pictures they headed back to their hostel at the end of the afternoon. It was a very pleasant – nearly day long - meeting and I will let you know about the details of the publication as soon as I know this myself.

The next Sunday I decided to go to the gym in the early morning. So, at 8 am I was not even the first one in, but later we were with 10 enthusiasts – all of us women – is that a coincidence, or does this mean something? Whoever knows, please tell me.

On Monday it was back into the classroom again and it was easy to get back into the ‘routine’. We will have a few busy weeks ahead of us with a lot of assignments – an exam week and after that some time out in the field to do pruning. This seems to be one of the most physically hard jobs in the vineyard and not at the least because the work needs to be done in the middle of winter. We have to be prepared and started to do exercises (we are supposed to do the exercises).

Bio-dynamic vineyard

I also went to Seresin again, this time to spray one of the Bio Dynamic preparations on the vineyard. First of all the BD Preparation 500 (this preparation – horn manure – is made from cow manure (fermented in a cow horn that is buried in the soil for six months through autumn and winter) and is used as a soil spray to stimulate root growth and humus formation) needed to be dynamised, which mainly means stirring. After that I went with Wendy, the bio-dynamic ‘guru’ on the vineyard, on the ‘mule’ to spray the diluted BD 500 on a few hectares of the vineyard. So, I got the opportunity to see the different vines, pruning systems and layout of the vineyard. All in all again very educational and the knowledge I gain here I could not gain during the course. The course only focuses on the conservative way of grape growing, being the use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides etc.

Wellington
Since the Hurricanes (the Wellington region Rugby team) had an important game to play in the competition I treated myself on a surprise trip to Wellington again to cheer them to a victory!! Marco and I did that together with John & Mickey (the journalists) with great result. Go the Canes!! They won with 21 – 10 and are still in the race for the final, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLYdIknFGQ., time for a few beers in the pub to celebrate this victory together with Marco’s flatmates. The next Hurricanes’ game is in Auckland – very tempting, but since I am a poor student, I have to stay in Blenheim this time.

Apart from the great rugby match, I could help ‘warm’ a friends’ house where we had another few beers and wines. With regards to the alcohol consumption I start to get integrated very well(?).

Blenheim
The wind and rain in Wellington was a great experience as well! So good to be back in sunny Blenheim! On the Monday it was a day of assignment writing again and I finished three of these. Now we are really gearing up for the last ‘full on’ weeks before we are going to play outside in the vineyard.

Cheers,
Anita

Cow's poo and Wellington

I still need to tell you about my experience at the vineyard before I left for Wellington. I had been on a bio-dynamic farm to look at some of the great work that they are doing and to share in this fun. So, I hopped in the car and took my gumboots with me, since the only thing I knew was that we were going to ‘stir cow’s poo’. I did not exactly know what to expect. When you want to have a look there is a nice explanation with pictures on the weblog of the vineyard where I have been: Seresin's Fourth Estate and you just scroll to 20 January 2008. We did exactly what is mentioned and showed there.

After a short introduction by Wendy, the Biodynamic Practitioner we started with preparing the cow’s dung for the cow pat pit, also called the manure concentrate or barrel compost. There was a trailer with cow dung – coming from cows from an organic farm in the neighbourhood. The task was to shovel the dung from one side of the trailer to the other, so to keep it in movement and add our energy into this manure and to aerate it at the same time. This needed to be done for an hour, but at least until the moment that the right texture was achieved. Halfway the texture became more evenly/balanced and at the end it was like it really wanted to stay together – didn’t want to be broken up. And this happened after around an hour.

Another task was the stirring in a bucket of water with valerian concentrate. The task was to stir it with a stick in one direction from the outside to the inside and thus to create a hole in the water and so to ‘dynamise’ it. This was nearly as physical a job as the stirring of the cow dung.

We had to fill three cow pad pits this afternoon and with a wheelbarrow the three pits were filled until 1.5 brick height. The pits are made of bricks and measure 90 x 60 cm. With our hands we made 5 holes in the dung where the preparations 502 to 506 will be put. These preparations are each made by adding the preparation to a bit of the earlier and ready prepared manure. This is then put in one of the holes in the cow pad pit and covered up again. When all the five holes are filled, the valerian mixture (preparation 207) is sprinkled over the manure and the bricks. The manure is then covered with a sack filled with wool (this can also be straw) and sprinkled with valerian again.

After this very interesting afternoon we got a taste of the biodynamic wine. The Chardonnay made by Seresin is really a good quality wine that is distinctive from other Marlborough Chardonnays. I left smelling of cow’s poo but with a great experience and promises to repeat these visits in future. Unfortunately, because I went to Wellington I missed two other experiences at this vineyard – but you can’t always have it all in life!

My short break in Wellington became a rather long break after all. When I planned the trip, I thought about staying for three days, but it has been more than a week before I returned to Blenheim. And yes, what about the wines then? Luckily one ‘colleague’ was back in Blenheim, but only for a short time and we decided that the wines could look after themselves. Hopefully, they didn’t have a party.

What have I been doing in Wellington? Not a lot apart from catching up with several people, which is always really great; I have been hanging around in the house, making walks, doing some gardening, writing assignments, having some drinks and some more. It was great to have a longer stay home, especially because it can take a long time before I will have this opportunity again. Maybe at the end of this year during the summer break.

Luckily I was able to attend the Queen’s Birthday in the city – so well organised every year by the Dutch Embassy. It is the same thing every year, with the beer, wine, jenever, cheese, herring and bitterballen, but a great way to meet a few ‘Dutchies’ again, some of them I had not seen since a while. Of course when everything is free…… you can imagine (or when you are not Dutch you might not). We had a nice evening and after that we spent some more time in the pub in town with Marco’s flatmates. He is renting out two rooms in our house at the moment, so I am able to live in Blenheim. For me that was about the end of my stay and I decided to head back on the ferry where I had a lot of time to write this blog. Now, I really want to get back in touch with my wines – I also have an indoor soccer game to play with my classmates – a Dutch journalist is in town who wants to meet me – and on Monday classes start again. So, I will be busy!

Catch you all later,
Anita

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

Moving again!

So after the good news of last time a lot has happened again. It is like life is everchanging the last months. This is great, because for me a life without change is like not living at all.


First of all I have spent the Easter Days in Wellington, where for a change, the weather was marvellous for nearly all of the weekend. Unfortunately, I had to write two assignments during my stay and therefore I did not have enough time to meet the people I would like to meet and to do everything that I had liked to do, but maybe next time ........ When I came back in Blenheim again there were visitors from Wellington. Blenheim is in a convenient position to the Picton Ferry so I have been meeting a lot of people from Wellington in the meantime (or are they just checking what I am doing here?) and it is great to go out with them and have a good time. A good break from school and the grapes.


The grape growing season here in the Marlborough area has come into its final stages. A lot of the grapes have been picked in the mean time. Last week we started monitoring the grapes in the school vineyard to decide when to pick. We have to make a red wine from Pinot Noir grapes in groups. I am working together on this project with a Russian girl and a Japanese guy and I think our group is very special, because of the different backgrounds and views on wine. From the start we agreed that we wanted to go the extra mile and so we have taken the extraordinary approach to try to make a Pinot Noir, but at the same time a Rose from these grapes. Therefore, we have to follow two separate procedures and although it will be extra work it will be far more interesting and a challenge! The test of the juice at the moment is perfect and we are confident that we are producing something that will be drinkable. From now on we have to monitor our product daily to be sure the process is going well.


In between the picking and crushing of the grapes I had to move houses again. Although, I did not have to, but I decided on moving somewhere where I had internet access and more space, so I have a real desk to do some work for school. The house itself is bigger as well, but here we live with four people in total, being the landlord, a classmate and a guy who works in a pub and two dogs. So, this weekend I am trying to settle down a bit and preparing for some tests that are upcoming this week.

There was a multicultural event in Blenheim organised by Migrant Support Marlborough this weekend where a lot of cultural groups performed. With my former flatmate I spent some time watching the different shows on stage - and for the first time the sun was not shining. It seems that autumn really is coming now. It feels already like a very long summer to me and I am enjoying that very much.

This week Marco will be travelling down to Blenheim for the first time, so he will be there during the official presentation of the Scholarship Award during a ceremony at the Institute on Thursday.

Cheers,
Anita

Good news!

Hi all

Just a quick message from Blenheim this time after a very successful week at the NMIT (Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology). First of all on Wednesday we went on a field trip to one of the wineries where they just started up the vintage for their sparkling wines. We have been on this winery all day and doing things like emptying grates with grapes, cleaning grates, cleaning presses and listening to explanations of the whole process from grape receival to wine. Of course the best part of this day was the wine tasting itself. We tasted their first and second tier products and got to recognise the differences.

The next day we went on a tour on a vineyard that is owned by a French family. It was very interesting to see the compromises that are made here between the French and NZ philosophy of grape growing and wine making.

But the highlight of this week was that I have won a scholarship for part of my fees this year!! A few weeks ago I applied for this on basis of my particular situation here and my interest in the biodynamic way of grapegrowing. My ideas were good enough to grant me the scholarship and in a few weeks time there will be an official presentation of this. Of course I have to do some work for it as well. I will have to write progress reports and publications for a magazine. To me it is only an extra bonus! And hopefully after Easter I can start working on a biodynamic vineyard, so I can start learning more about this way of doing things. The biodynamics are not teached at the Institute, but I become more and more convinced of the fact that this is the way of the future (and should have been of the past!).

Sorry, this is a short message, but I am so excited and wanted to share it!!

Have a great weekend,
Anita