2010
I thought that getting up at 6:30 in the morning when I was over in Italy to go for a walk before work was bad…here at Henschke I am starting at 6am…that’s right, you heard me: START WORK at 6am! Hence I wake up at 5:05am (that five minutes makes a difference, I swear!), dress myself, try and look presentable, have breakfast, grab my pre-made lunch from the night before, and head out the door by 5:30am, making it to work on time. Talk about keen to work!
This week has been warm and humid with rain starting to come in. It makes for hard work in the afternoon and we’re usually all wrecked by the late afternoon from the mugginess draining your energy. We’re working through getting barrels sulphured and stacked, I have been sulphuring up the Hill of Grace, the Hill of Roses, the Mt Edelstone, the Tappa’s Pass and the Cyril. They’re names of some of the red wines belonging to Henschke here. I was so proud of myself yesterday because I managed to manipulate the barrels racks to get one I wanted several rows in from the side with the forklift which is bloody tricky, but clearly do-able if someone like me who doubts themselves can do it!
Today I was lucky to be inside so topped up the barrels with wine from one barrel, so that was nice to be by myself and have some alone time in the back shed they call ‘Air Force One’. After lunch crazy Harry found me and got me to simulate the life of a drug dealer by measuring accurately 100g of a suspicious white powder into small plastic bags for the vineyard crew. Sounds dodgy hey, but really I’m just being a smart-arse and I was getting measured bags of potassium metabisulphite (PMS) sulphur powder for the vineyard to be able to throw over the fruit bins easily. I did about 160 bags going through 16kg of sulphur. That stuff is potent!
La Donna del Vino 
Leave a Comment