The Life of a Viticulture Student

Pirate Party
To get rid of the exam stress, some classmates organised a pirate party. Since this was in the middle of Euro 2008 where at that stage Holland was very successful, I decided to add a bit of orange to the party.

The party was a huge success and it lasted until the next day and was still going on when I finished my casual Sunday afternoon job in the library at 16.00 hours.

Work on the vineyard
After the release of the stress, it was time to start doing the real work. In this case we had to do two weeks of pruning experience in a vineyard. I chose to go to the Biodynamic vineyard where I had been before. Since it is middle of winter I was prepared for some very cold starts. I had to get up around 6 am to be able to start work at 7:30 am. A few of those mornings the car was frozen, so it took a while before I could drive away. As a real kiwi I do not use a scraper to de-ice my windows, but just turn on the motor and switch the airco on full warmth. After five minutes the windows are clear. This is not the most environmental friendly way of dealing with the problem, however. The cold however was more of a problem first thing in the morning. Waking up in a room/house that has the same temperature as the air outside (a few degrees minus) is not very comfortable. However, as soon as you are in the car and get warm, it’s okay and while working on the vineyard I have hardly been cold at all.

Apart from the pruning work I was able to do some other things as well, like there were: making of compost, adding the bio-dynamic preparations to these compost heaps, extensive morning teas, attending staff meetings and…… Tai Chi sessions! The latter was a great intensive at this vineyard.
The support from the colleagues was very good as well. They are all very friendly people with a great approach to everything living. It was very refreshing to be able to be part of their team for a few weeks.

For pictures, see: http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh106/AnitasTourDeAotearoa/Blenheim/Pruning%20Experience/?start=20

Wellington
Just before the end of the full four weeks I decided that I deserved a trip to Wellington, before the start of the next semester. Here I started with a Girls’ Night Out in town: having some drinks and dinner, seeing Mamma Mia (the movie), having some more drinks and dance the night away. It was a fantastic night out and we, girls, are already looking forward to the next one.

Back to school
And then, suddenly it was 14 July – back to school day. We started with a day of First Aid Course, which is part of the curriculum. The rest of the week was filled with trying to get back into the routine and see what the papers of this semester are about. They do not sound very interesting: Soils – Weeds, Pest and Diseases - Plant Science, but luckily we also still have the production of our own wine to do. Our rosé is ready to bottle, but we have to wait for the right equipment to arrive. We are doing trials with our red wine, that is partly spoiled by bad bacteria, but hopefully we can still make something ‘drinkable’ out of the 150 litres. And then there is my own Sauvignon Blanc which is not too bad at all. This is also very close to bottling.

By the way, the first exam results were above expectation – so it seems that I am on the right track.

As you can all read from the above I have not been bored the last weeks and will not easily get bored the upcoming months with the subjects that I have to study.

Cheers,
Anita

Getting High and Low

Exam time
The last two weeks I spent a lot of my time with preparations for school. The first week was ‘study week’, which meant that we had a few revision lectures and apart from that a lot of time to study. I spent a lot of time in the gym and studied in between. I found it pretty hard this time to get motivated. The main reason for this was, that my assignments had all been very good, so I did not have the urge to score high marks in the exams.

The results of the four exams will be a bit mixed but I am convinced I passed them all and was quite relieved when it was all over. Life got a bit boring with only studying and exams. Since I have only got the gym and am not working outside of school I do not have a social network in Blenheim which makes it sometimes a bit ‘lonely’ and boring. And to top this up I do not have time and/ore money to travel to Wellington to taste a bit of the real life. I have some ideas for the upcoming months though.

Working
But first of all I will be working on the biodynamic vineyard for four weeks, being two weeks of pruning experience and two weeks of holiday work. Yes, I have been so stupid as to commit myself to a full holiday of working as to earn some money. Looking back I should have taken some time off as well, since the next semester will start full on straight after that. And it would have been quite nice to spend some time in Wellington again – this might have to wait until September now, when we will have the first break

Integration
As mentioned before I think it is getting a bit boring here in Blenheim for me – not a lot to do and I finally understand a bit more about the drinking problems in NZ and this region in particular. I just try to integrate better and better and whether this makes me a better person is to be seen. Every Friday evening after the indoor soccer match we head to someone’s place to have some drinks and most of the time it ends in a big mesh with people being drunk and too drunk. Not a nice sight but a very familiar one in NZ. And the end of the exams is of course a very good reason to get ‘pissed’; we need to get rid of a bit of exam stress after all.

Euro 2008
The people in Holland will have had a very good week with two good games and wins of the Dutch soccer team. The commentator on the TV here is already predicting the team as the European Champion. My way of watching the games is very different from yours and what I was used to in The Netherlands. In The Netherlands I would be in the pub with friends or at a friend’s place to watch the game and drink some beers. Since the games here start at 06:45 in the morning and I do not know any Dutch people around here, I watch the games on the couch in my sleeping bag. It would be nice to be able to just spend one day in a Dutch pub now. I see all the movies and pictures on the internet about what is happening in both The Netherlands and Switzerland and it seems like one big party. I came along a nice one, see: http://www.sportwereld.nl/voetbal/nederlandselftal/2353585/Fotos_30000_Oranjefans_in_Bern.html

This is it for now – tonight we have our End of Exam Pirate Party! So, time to get dressed up.

Cheers,
Anita

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