We had no definite plan for our New Zealand stay, just had this vague idea that we wanted to visit but also live there for a few months, discover things about farms, sheep and grapes, and also make some extra money for the trip. And that’s kind of exactly what we have done since January!
The first couple of months, during the South hemisphere summer, we travelled all around in our campervan admiring the incredible nature, and helped in farms with llamas, sheep and cows. Then with autumn, time came to find a real job, so we headed for the Marlborough region, famous for its Sauvignon Blanc white wines. Ieva found a cellar hand (=winery helper) job at a big winery, and Cesar worked at a vineyard in exchange for food and accommodation for both of us. And this is how we experienced our first vintage (grape harvest)!
First, the vineyard: we arrived a few weeks before harvest, so there were a few jobs like spraying the grapes, or putting nets to protect them from birds. Then there were a couple of intense weeks of harvest. The weather wasn’t so great, so the grapes could not ripen fast enough and started rotting… it was a race against time to collect everything before it’s all lost!
Neat and infinite rows of vines…
The sauvignon gris grapes which are slightly pink
Sauvignon blanc grapes which are green to golden when ripe
We kept some to make our own wine… it didn’t really work though :-/ tasted more like a weird vermouth or something haha
One of the jobs was to cut the lower branches of the vines so that they don’t catch some diseases
Cesar and his tractor which he fixed
Cesar driving the tractor to put nets on the vines to protect them from birds
He was also digging trenches with this beauty, so that the vines don’t get flooded when it rained
Thanks to the long straight rows of vines, most harvesting can be done by machine: it shakes the grapes off, directly into a bin
Beaters that shake the grapes off
The bin that collects the grapes and then loads the truck which goes to the winery
Cesar the lumberjack
Cesar insisted on also teaching ieva how to drive a tractor… turns out it’s the same as a car 🙂
And then the winery… sorry if it breaks your idyllic image of a cellar with beautiful wooden barrels everywhere, haha! Turns out these days most wine is made in large metallic tanks. From what I hear, the process here in the “new world” is much more industrialised than in Europe, as there are less regulations and they can use all sorts of additives and industrial processes to better control wine quality.
Sunrise in the tank farm: I liked the contrast between these metal giants and the beautiful surrounding mountains
And sunset…
And night-time!
The catwalks allowed us to reach the lid on those 10m tall tanks. Most of them hold 200-500 thousand liters of juice/wince, the smallest ones holding 10 thousand
The beautiful barrels at the entrance for visitors to see
There were also a few thousand barrels of 220L to age some of the wines
“Arrival area”: that’s where those trucks from the vineyards bring the grapes, which then get separated from the stems and crushed to make juice
Some areas were off-limits because the latest big earthquake in November damaged tanks. That region is very shaky, we felt a few earthquakes of 4.5 intensity – just enough to get a bit scared!
So what was I doing there? The winery normally runs with ~40 people during the year, but for the vintage they hire additional ~80 casual workers, mostly all young people from all over the world on a working holiday visa. We were organised in night shift and day shift, so that the winery functions 24/7. During the intense harvest period, I didn’t get a single day off for 5 weeks, and worked from 7:00 to 19:30 every day!
At first the job seemed complicated, as there is so much to learn when you have no idea how such a factory works! Essentially everyone had a role in the process: receive the grapes, crush them, then clarify the juice, then transfer it from one tank to another, measure temperatures, mix the juice during fermentation, put in additives, load into trucks to transport, and so on. There were all sorts of tools, hoses of different sizes, pumps, tank types etc… But at the end, it’s all like a logic puzzle: the wine needs to flow and there should be no holes in the circuit 🙂
Our dayshift team – another such group was working during the night!
We had our name and flag on the helmet, so much easier!
A lot of the jobs consisted in pumping the juice/wine from one tank to another, or inside the same tank to mix it. This means lots of giant hoses and pumps everywhere!
What to do when you are asked to pump into a tank located on the other side of the factory? You connect the hose to one of the “junctions” which then go into overhead metal tubes that head in the needed direction. Sometimes you need to use 5-6 such junctions before you reach your destination! They are colour-coded to help you find the right one… takes some learning time before you know how to reach different places!
As there are several sizes of hoses, we needed to find adaptors to screw them together
Various accessories were available, but mostly we had to walk around hunting them as there were never enough for everyone!
We all carried around 2 huge spanners for 2 and 3 inch hoses
Our sailor outfit – to survive a 12.5h day in the rain!
Or to go waterblast the inside of a tank!
Lot of work cleaning the tanks full of juice leftovers
Sometimes we had to add oak chips – as a replacement for wooden barrels…
Injecting nitrogen with a huge stick to mix up the wine
Measuring oxygen levels…
Doing the “water test” before sending any product, we needed to test the lines for any leaks, and also clean them.
Adding CO2 from a (very heavy!) bottle
Adding dry ice, or CO2, to avoid oxydation and kill any bacteria forming on the surface
Sometimes things didn’t go as expected…
Sometimes some wine leaks… oh well, a few hundred liters is nothing when there is half a million in one tank!
Some of the tanks could be tipped to get the red grape skins out – impressive to see such giants flipped upside down!
Grape skin leftovers at the end, after all remaining juice is squeezed
And these are… also grape leftovers!! This smelly mass is what is left after white grapes are pressed, the juice is clarified/filtered and then centrifuged to get out any leftover juice…
I spent a lot of time in the team that loads trucks that take the wine away for bottling
This means lots of waiting time chatting to trucksters while the 24,000L of wine get pumped in!
We had to seal the truck lid very well, to avoid any leaks and also to ensure that no-one drinks the wine during transport 😀
We filled these containers for shipping to… London!
Sometimes long hours and sometimes heavy physical work (imagine dragging a 30-meter hose with metal fittings!!) but also super interesting work for a casual temporary job. And lots of fun meeting travelling winemakers from all over the world!
We also loved living in the Marlborough region… So much space and nature, and one of the sunniest regions in New Zealand! When we had some time off, we were able to go hike in the fjords, collect mussels and oysters in the beach, help ourselves to peaches and oranges in the garden… And we lived with a nice Kiwi family, doing lots of things together – so great to be embedded in the real local life. Such a relaxed lifestyle, really tempting – if only it wasn’t so far from all of you 😀
In addition to grapes, we could also eat other autumn goodies directly from the trees in the garden: peaches, oranges, apples, feijoas (NZ speciality, like a weird guava)
Oysters eaten directly on the beach…
Little Sunday hike… locals all have boats to enjoy the fjords on weekends…
The coast was lifted by several meters after the November Kaikoura earthquake…
We are missing New Zealand already, it felt like home after 5 months!
And now after a week in Sydney, we are on a last stop in Indonesia before coming back to Europe for the summer 😎
