Harvest work at Felton Road

Hej på er allihopa där hemma, and around the globe!

It's now been a week sins I first arrived in Cromwell, to start harvesting at Felton Road. Today it's Good Friday (Långfredag) and we have a day of, which I've so far spent in Glenorchy north of Queenstown walking in beautiful forest and looking at all the beautiful mountains surrounding the area.

Started my work at Felton Road last Sunday by unclipping nets, which meant that we took off plastic clips that look like the ones you would normally find on bread bags. There are allot of birds on this island and most of them like Pinot Noir very, very much so to protect the grapes you have to put nets over them.

On Monday the weather was a bit shaky with light showers in the morning so we started at nine instead of eight. Then we picked Pinot at the Calvert vineyard for about 5 hours before more rain made it impossible to continue. We picked all the grapes into plastic crates of about 8-10 kg, because the grapes where going to be shipped to the north island and made into wine by Craggy Range. So at the end of the day they where loaded onto a big truck, that would drive them to Hawkes Bay in about 48 hours.

Tuesday looked nicer in the morning with no rain and just partly cloudy, so we started to pick grapes at eight. Started to get to know more and more people, a great mixture of french, german, swiss, kiwi, chilean, american and to my great surprise Oskar from Stockholm. Oskar was just staying for a few days before going to Sydney then on to Bangkok and back home.

On Wednesday Gareth (the Boss) had decided that I should go to Queenstown to get my Passport so that I could get my IRD number (skattenummer) sorted. So I just helped to pick grapes in the morning before lunch. We did pick the prestigious block 3 and block 5 of Pinot Noir that are made into the most expensive wines that Felton Road makes. The grapes tasted really good, much flavours nice firm acidity and above all concentration.
At lunch break it was time to shoot off for Queenstown, a very nice and curvy road that is allot of fun to drive and takes about 35min. The Immigrations had my Passport with a working permit placed inside, YES! before heading back to Cromwell i went to the post office and picked up a IRD application form, being really hungry I had a big hamburger at Fergburger, very tasty!

Back in Cromwell I picked up a letter that confirmed that I was working at Felton Road. Then I drove down to the post office and filled out the form and mailed it before I returned to Felton road to help finishing of the days harvest and help with cleaning of all the buckets that we use for the grapes.

Thursday morning was really cold with snow on the tallest peaks surrounding the valley. Though the morning was cold the day turned nice and sunny with warmer and more comfortable temperatures. We picked a mixture of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at the Elms vineyard, not in to the same buckets of course. At the afternoon break we headed back to the Calvert vineyard to pick some of the last rows of Pinot over there.

Sins most things where going to be closed on Good Friday in Cromwell i went to by some grocery's and to fill up the car with gas. Then we went to the local pub for karaoke night :-)
I didn't sing but a drank a few pints of organic beer and listened to allot of country music :-( before the night was over.

Ha det!!
Martin