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Random: Street Names – Feelin’ Groovy
31 Jan2012
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
Many moons ago, I was kindly put up in a house for five months within the town of Nuriootpa, or ‘Nuri‘, as the locals call it. It was vintage 2010 and I had driven over from Melbourne to the famous Barossa Valley. Nuri was the central base for the working people of this community and made for a pleasant, quiet and convenient town to be in. I resided on a property off from Johnson Court. Johnson…quite the common, stock standard name for a street, I dare say. This never bothered me until one day, I began to hear whispers of a wondrous land located not too far away, where the situation was somewhat different.
Love and Marriage and Wine Labels…
22 Nov2011
Love and marriage. A classically predictable combination.
But love and marriage and wine labels? Perhaps not so in most cases, but I shall highlight how one day, not so many moons ago, these three became inextricably linked.
I have never considered myself an artist by any means. I did grow up though with a creatively charged mother fostering my finger painting/plaster fun house/pottery talents, as well as falling for that appendage on Mr Squiggle and making sure the ABC’s other godsend Art Attack was a permanent fixture in my weekly television intake. The teenage years saw my high school offer us students every art medium possible. I gave life drawing a go. I read and began grasping the technique of Naoko Takeuchi’s manga, before dappling with waterpaints as shown by my mother for how best to capture a memory when travelling overseas. Despite the various creative outlets I was given the opportunity to trial, there was one style that stayed strong and true wherever I would go. Close friends and family, in particular colleagues from past places of work, have at one stage or another been the victim of random cartoon sketches by yours truly during my employment. The most memorable was during my five month stint at Henschke winery in the Eden Valley. At the end of the working day I would occasionally loiter in the winemaker’s office/laboratory, whiteboard marker in hand, waiting for my unsuspecting victims to leave, before then leaping onto their desk and beginning an elaborate caricature of one of the employees. I think I chose my first suspect well. It just so happened to be the unassuming Stephen Henschke who walked into the office bright and early the next day to analyse the work board, only to be confronted by a strange cartoon likeness of himself on the adjacent side. Suffice to say that I think he was impressed, considering that I got asked to continue working post-vintage to assist in the cellar long after that sketch had first appeared.
Phew.
Welcome to Henschke Park, Sam Neill!
27 May2010
WARNING! Please refrain from touching the wild animals in the cellar on your journey through Henschke Park. We hold no responsibility should you be sprayed with wine, trip over a hose, hear loud noises known as Triple J, or mistake a female animal for a male.
Jack with Sam & Gazza
That’s right Ladies & Gentlemen, today we had an honourable guest arrive at the winery. He has his own winery in NZ called Two Paddocks, and is these days more famously known for his red meat endorsements rather than latest acting accolades. Mind you, he will always hold a special place in my heart for his courageous battles against the animal kingdom in Jurassic Park! I am talking about none other than Sam Neill!
I’ll admit, he looked like an old man coming out of a camping trip…and he is an old man at that, but he was pretty lovely. So lovely in fact that he was nice enough to have a snapshot taken with us goofbags (from left: Gazza, Cynthia (cellar door), Sammy boy, Susannah (PR & Marketing) and Elaine (cellar door). I suppose I shouldn’t pick on his attire considering my own manly threads (shakes head).
Hot-air ballooning with the Henschke’s over the Eden Valley
3 Apr2010
About to take off: 7:15am
Dawn breaks in the Eden Valley
The Hill of Grace Vineyard
Captain Andreas (son of Stephen Henschke) touchdowns and we swap crew
Beautiful colours looking up
Stuart and I follow the balloon closely by car as the boys contour fly and skim the valley
The balloon lands roughly and Stuart and I scan the landscape in search of the boys in some paddock
Packing the balloon up in an old lady’s cow paddock
THE END…great day
Photo update and tales
21 Mar2010
Ooo if you look carefully I was trying to capture the Disney on Ice-style magic of the floor with the smoke wafting over. It’s actually just me at the dry ice machine and I thought it looked cool
The winemakers had pressed off a whole bunch of Frontignac grapes and were going to dump everything else even though the grapes were still reasonably juicy (because you start getting more phenolics which you don’t want in the juice). Harry saw what they were doing and suggested we make for ourselves (not for sale) a bin of Frontignac white port. This is the bin the next day. The grapes went through a chiller so they were about 7C at this stage and my legs were freezing!
I asked Harry if we should plunge it down, but considering this bin is full of grape skins and not juice, it would be like trying to plunge concrete. He suggested the best thing would be to get in there…something I was all for and so offered my legs each morning over the weekend to plunge in the acid and yeast I’d inoculated it with. Don’t be grossed out, you won’t be drinking it, and it needs this contact to make sure I’m getting the yeast through everything before it really starts fermenting and then we need to fortify it with spirit!
The Eden Valley at dawn
Gazza smashes F7!
15 Mar2010
You’d think the guys have never seen a chick in the cellar before!
This morning Stephen Henschke told the press guy Pete that it was my turn to do a fermenter and they’d set aside a ‘small’ 4.5 tonne red fermenter for me to shovel out of the rectangular concrete vats. They’re about as tall as I am, and you have to dig around yourself and shovel skins high above your head into a pump. FRICKEN HARD WORK!
I got in there in my jeans, gumboots and singlet and all of a sudden ALL THE GUYS come up the stairs and climb up to the red fermenters or stand by the side and yell at me, ‘GO GAZZA!’, and Stephen Henschke’s there with his digital camera snapping a gazillion shots away, then five minutes later returns with a photo he’s printed off and sticks it on the front of the press with the words, “GAZZA SMASHES F7” (fermenter no. 7). Boys!
- Gazza smashing Fermenter 7…notice the red hands
I suppose I did ‘smash’ into it well after the first 10 minutes of dodgy shovelling. Then Pete gave me a 5-minute breather while I rested my wrist, then I hopped back in and finished it all off. What an effort! It added 4 points to my Gazza tally on the board. I’m behind the boys, but what can you do?
Some of the office ladies saw me and yelled, “GO GIRL!” as they passed which was motivating. Towards the end you’re in the swing of things and you can see that the end is nigh…and your arms are bulging with pain but you’ve JUST GOTTA KEEP GOING! Show the men you’re man enough! haha.
My boots got grape skins in them from the start so for the rest of the day I had one purple painted jean leg and then people patting me on the back as I passed afterwards. What a bloody workout!
Widow Beater and Monkey Men
14 Mar2010
This weekend we worked all of it, Saturday and Sunday, such is vintage hours.
This morning I helped out Jacky boy by plunging the Pinot Noir open fermenter tanks. I had to put my plank of wood across it, climb up with my plunging tool and start pushing down the hardish cap of skins. Obviously it’s hot work so I took my long-sleeved top off and had my black Bonds singlet top underneath.
Just so happens that as I start getting into it, Fella and Josh come up to the red cellar, see me atop the tank and start hooting comments, “Muscles from Brussels!’, ‘Look at them guns!’, ‘She’s got the widow beater on!‘ (instead of wife beater, it’s widow beater because it’s black). They left me alone after 3 minutes then once I thought I had peace to myself, they’d sent Stephen Henschke up to check out the scene that they relayed as ‘Gazza’s up plunging in the widow beater go check out her guns!’ All in good fun. Bloody men.
The Monkey Men business related to another story. We have forklifts that are capable of taking 3 tonnes worth of stuff around. Sometimes though we’re bordering on the forklift’s capacity when they need to move the open fermenters full of grapes from one area to another. The fact that the landscape at Henschke is up and down and hills everywhere provides for a dangerous terrain. In other words, you need to really think about which direction you’re going and with what load and how it’s going to impact on if the forklift is going to tip one way or the other. A lot of the time there are scrapings across the road now because if you lift the open fermenters more than a few centimetres, the load is so heavy that it lifts the back tyres of the forklift right off the ground! To combat this what do we do? We monkey it!
The story goes like this. I was in the cellar minding my own business when Fella comes running in, ‘Gazza, come on, we need another one!’ That’s all the information I get before he bolts out of the side door. I hurry after him and see two boys, Disco Stu and Jacky, already sitting atop the back of the forklift hanging off the top railings like monkeys. I arrive and Fella and I hop on the limited space left and the four of us act to create a more balanced load in the back against the large load of grapes in the front. Hey it works! Totally dodgy in an OH&S way but Stephen had a good laugh when he saw all four of us squatting and hanging off the back of the forklift making monkey sounds 😛
Just call me GAZZAAAAAA!
13 Mar2010
No don’t, seriously.
I have been boganised here at Henschke and they have nicknamed me Gazza. Short for Gazzo. They could say my last name correctly too with the Italian accent and everything. Then one day, Fella (my winemaker boss Paul) swung his rolling chair out of the upstairs office, poking his head out onto the catwalk and down to the wine cellar where I was somewhere working and yelled in an ocker voice, ‘OI GAZZA!’ to which I responded from somewhere, ‘WHHHAAAAATTT!?’
Since then, everybody, even the big boss Stephen, refers to me as Gazza. They also love to not only say it, but say it in the ockerest accent they can adopt. It makes me feel like this dude:
He looks more like a Gazza than I do!
Too busy to type, so here’s photos
7 Mar2010
Glenelg Beach
The barrel hall (aka Air Force One) where I spent my first week climbing these racks and filling them up again. In the far corner is all the Hill of Grace barrels
Adelaide city graffiti
Relaxed Sunday breakfast at the Company Kitchen
My machine in a time-warp…or just on the main street of Tanunda
Doing a ripper white juice racking off the solids on some Riesling
Sunset on the way to Greenock pub…warning to self not to drive and take photos at the same time in the future
Fringe Festival ‘Zeitgeist’ show: Naked woman surrounded by naked bodies
The drive from work
The drive to work
Sunrise near Air Force One
The trees in Coultard Reserve Park
Sunset in the park
Me shifting barrels on the forklift
Young Jack (aka Slick Slackety) measuring the red ferments
La Donna del Vino
"'Just living is not enough,' said the butterfly. 'One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.'" - Hans Christian Andersen
La Donna del Vino 