2012
An excerpt from the memory banks [2008] of La Donna del Vino
Precariously climbing barrels. Scene from Zorro’s Romance.
Tag Archives: Vintage
I’ll Come Running Back To You
27 Mar2012
It began with an array of memories that washed over my mind. Then there were the Steely Dan songs I heard aired on the radio. Then I was outside gardening and loving the feeling of dirt between my fingers.
All this developed into a deep longing. I recall the sensation as it was building: A palatable excitement…A nervous grin…An itch…
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
Welcome to the Barossa
2 Feb2010
BAROSSA VALLEY
I arrived here not even a week after landing back in the country after completing a vintage in Bolgheri, Italy. What am I here for? Henschke winery up in Keyneton. I’ve got a vintage placement here while there’s work to be done so will make the most of the opportunity and work as hard as I can. Considering the ‘work’ I did in Italy was so ridiculously easy in terms of workload and hours, I am really looking forward to getting down to some dirty work, earning some money, learning heaps from these guys and just having a ball!
WORK
It is only my second day working and my hands are already stained a dark colour from working with barrels…Lordy Lord, help me!
WORKIt is only my second day working and my hands are already stained a dark colour from working with barrels…Lordy Lord, help me!
The work crew in the winery are a lovely bunch. There is the head boss and figure head Stephen and Prue Henschke who are so small, so cute, and incredibly nice people. Well-spoken and really interesting. Then I’d go onto my winemaking boss Paul Hampton who is really cool, funny, full of information, youngish and just great, so am really looking forward to working with him when he’s around. The assistant winemaker is Josh, a young, tall guy who’s really cruisy but really passionate. His family have a winery which he will take over one day so he’s in a great place to practice! There’s also the jovial Jack, the baby of the Henschke team, at the young 21 years old. He’s studying the same Wine Science degree that I did and seems older than his actual years say but is easy to work with and gives good direction. There are a whole bunch more of people of course but the main character would be Harry. My housemate warned me about Harry saying his language could be foul (if every second word turns out to be ‘bugger’ or ‘shit’ or ‘bloody hell’ then that’s what she was referring to), and he will tell you like it is. Turns out, I really like Harry so far! He explains things clearly and in a quintessentially male manner he knows everything about alloys, pumps, and stuff…most of the time I get the gist of what he is on about and other times I don’t…hey, I can’t be a full man here, can I!?
The winery is old, creaky, and quaint to say the least! So different from all the ubiquitous modern wineries around so it’s a great change and funny at times to see an ancient pump whirling around that’s been there since the 60’s or something. The floor where we empty/fill barrels is a purply colour at this stage because of the wine-tainted spit we cover it with. At least here they are pedantic about quality control and we taste every barrel that we come across. Thank god! There is Triple J radio playing in the background, not so loud so that you can hear the shouts for when the tank is almost full from across the other side of the winery. Sweat drips down your forehead as you careen the forklift in to pick up four barrels on the side – not a normal situation but Harry says you can fit more barrels into a warehouse this way. The sweat is because you’re dealing with quite the expensive product here, especially when one barrel can contain 225 litres of wine, you times that by how many bottles you’d get at 750mL, then by the retail price of each bottle…so if you drop it….shit.
At least my second day finished in true winemaking fashion: we all went upstairs to the lab where there were samples of the 2009 Henschke Hill of Grace from about 20 barrels. They would eventually make up the final blend and each was interesting with slightly different flavours, tannins, texture, length, depending on the cooper, the barrel (American or French), the forest the oak is from, the vineyards of course, whether the vines were 150 years old or 20 years old, the type of soil, the aspect of the vineyard…so many variables so it was really great to do with all of us there.
I also gave them my box of seven wines from Shadowfax winery that Matt Harrop had given me. Initially my housemate Monica who works in production told me that they don’t drink alcohol during work hours so no wine will be drunk she thought apart from beers on a Friday afternoon. But after chatting with winemaker Paul he told me once it’s vintage and we’re working long hours, we’ll have dinner here us six at the winery and they’ll usually go down to the ‘tunnel’ (the old wine storage area like the caves of Portugal) and select a mystery wine for everyone so we’ll get to drink some interesting stuff there he said. Yessssssssss!
Arriverderci Bolgheri
20 Jan2010
Casa dolce casa (home sweet home) 20th Gennaio 2010
Having spent the best part of January travelling around south-western Europe it was nice to come back to my old home Bolgheri in Tuscany for three days to just relax, eat fantastic food, and hang out with my friends and take the time to show mum around the countryside by bike and foot. We had a great time here and I got to show mum just how wonderful the Meletti-Cavallari’s really are at Grattamacco. Below are some of the last photos of our trip. Enjoy. The next instalments for La Donna Del Vino will be when I am in South Australia. I move there on Saturday to begin work on Monday at Henschke Winery in the Barossa Valley.
La macchina bella di Claudio (il meccanico di Piermario)
Claudio’s beautiful car (Piermario’s mechanic)
L’albero famoso di Toscana (the famous Tuscan tree)
Facendo una passeggiata nella città di Bolgheri (strolling through the town of Bolgheri)
Portando la Zaira per una passeggiata a Castagneto Carducci (Taking Zaira for a walk in Castagneto Carducci)
Il modo vecchio per asciugare i vestiti in Toscana (the old way of drying your clothes in Tuscany)
I sogni dei ragazzi di Bolgheri
17 Dec2009
Giorgio, Francesca and Greta have given me a new notebook as a christmas gift. Totally lovely of them! I just so happened to finish my other diary too so it is perfect timing. Plus the fact that they filled the first few pages with memories and notes makes it all the more special. The first page of the notebook reads: I have a dream and underneath it leaves you lines to write your dreams…this is what they wrote for themselves:
Sogno di Giorgio:
- avere almeno lo porsche
- fare sesso con m…f…
- fare il vino più buono nel mondo
Sogno di Franceseca:
- girare il mondo
- imparare l’inglese come Krystina
- fare tante vacanze
- imparare surf con il fratello di Krystina (cioe Davide)
- conoscere tanta gente carina
Sogno di Greta:
- vedere NYC
- fare passito
- avere una mia cantina
- imparare l’inglese
- imparare il portoghese
- comprare un paio di Jimmy Choo
- venire a trovarti in Australia
- sposare il cantante dei Green Day
E poi ho scritto il nel spazio vuoto:
Sogno di Krystina:
- avere una cantina piccola come Sorrenberg
- girare il mondo, avere tante esperienze
- assaggiare i vini più buoni con il cibo più buono
- avere una enoteca buonissima e figa con la Amanda
- fare il mio Masters in Wine Business
- avere una casa mia con tutte le mie cose
- avere una macchina dell’epoca – Fiat 500!
Nice thoughts, no?
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 