Greetings from Shiraz Country...

Greetings from Shiraz country - The weather this week has been uncharacteristically cool and wet, meaning that the grapes have been unable to produce the level of sugar required for decent wine to be made - so another week has passed in South Australia and still we have no fruit to make into wine. Friday was the worst day, raining from dawn to sunset – that said I suppose we in Clare should count ourselves lucky as just a few miles further south in the Barossa there have been flash floods which we have been fortunate enough to avoid. 

View over Leasingham from the Riesling Trail

The lack of grapes has meant that us ‘cellar rats’ at Kilikanoon have been put to task this week with countless jobs mostly involving pressure washers and sweeping up. Anyone who thinks that working at a winery is an endless cycle of strolling through vineyards, tasting wine and getting a suntan, think again! There are hundreds of barrels to be washed, huge stainless steel tanks and fermenters to be chemically cleaned, floors to be scrubbed and other duties too numerous to mention – personal lowlights from the past few days would be the cleaning out of a shed and washing the winery truck. On the other hand, the weather since the weekend has got a lot better. As I write I’m sitting on the vintage house terrace looking out at a perfect Azure sky with not a cloud in sight. Here’s hoping we should have fruit to process by the end of the week…

We have had a few tonnes of grapes so far from Baroota, another South Australian town close to the ocean, a few miles northwest of Clare – so there has been some wine related work to do – the first half of this week has been mostly going through the process of ‘racking’, whereby wine is released from its fermentation tank and pumped back over the top, thereby submerging the ‘cap’, or layer of skins, stems and pips that give red wines their tannin and colour. The one thing to remember if you ever find yourself performing this task is this; always, always always check that all your valves are in their correct position before releasing the wine. I learnt this lesson the hard way this afternoon and my t-shirt, shorts, boxers, socks and skin are all now a dull purple colour which is proving very difficult to get rid of.

Ripening Shiraz grapes. Rare.

In other news, all the Kilikanoon cellar rats have entered into a vintage beard wager. One simple rules no shaving whatsoever until the last wine has been made. Now, I entered into this bet last Thursday evening at a barbecue at the Sevenhills pub just up the road from Clare. We had all been invited there to meet the other wineries, get to know each other better and indulge in general merriment. The wineries all brought several bottles of their own wines and needless to say we all tried several glasses, after which I found myself tied into a bet that I could never win for the following reasons. Firstly, facial hair irritates me – I can stand it for a couple of weeks before I snap and hack it all off. Secondly, every girl I have ever known has said I look better without it (not that there are many girls to impress around here…). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I have all the facial hair growing ability of a 12 year old boy. I suspect I’ll be buying the winner his case of beer. Hmmm…

Running continues to be a source of relaxation and pleasure – the Riesling Trail which runs parallel to the Main North Road really is the most perfect running track you could imagine – the best time for it would be early morning but I’m usually at the winery by 7, so the next best option is early evening, around 6pm when the sun is just thinking about heading back round to England for the night. It really is an awesome place to run – perfectly flat, with green hills all around, lemon myrtle and olive trees lining the path and Shiraz and Riesling stretching in perfect formation as far as the eye can see. Now and again a cyclist glides past, or a tractor rumbles by in the adjacent vineyards, but apart from that I have the whole place to myself. Almost. You see it seems that the local snake population, energised by a day in the South Australian sunshine, is out and about during the early evening – a fact I had completely overlooked until yesterday, when, pounding along admiring said scenery, I came within an Asics width of a Brown Snake. Now fair play, it just kept going and was gone before I’d even had chance to get out of the way so may I take this opportunity to thank the snakes of the world for being more scared of me than I am of them. Sincerely.

Welcome to the Clare Valley!

Hello, welcome back to Fair Vinkum! and sorry for the radio silence that has been in operation for the past couple of months. I’ve been in Tasmania earning money and doing not very much else – not great material!

I’ve now had three different start dates for my new job at Kilikanoon Wines in the Clare Valley (http://www.kilikanoon.com.au/). It seems that Riesling and Shiraz grapes and the South Australian sunshine don’t give as much of a toss about my flight tickets and hotel reservations as I do. Originally I was intended to start on February 7^th, then it rained so it was put back to the 21^st. Then the sun came out again, so here I am. Lesson learned – when next working at a winery do not make any concrete travel plans until the weekend you’re supposed to start.

Anyway, I bid a fond farewell to everyone on Cradle Mountain on Monday morning and  left Tassie for the Clare Valley via an overnight stay in Adelaide. Feeling slightly sorry for myself nursing a hangover from my last night on the mountain, I checked into the Stamford Plaza on North Terrace and was given room 1111 on the 11^th floor, overlooking the Adelaide Oval, the old railway station and the botanical gardens. It was a fantastic hotel and I was in the mood to do nothing but stay in, have dinner, watch a movie and go to sleep in the biggest bed I’ve ever seen in my life with six (count them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) pillows.

I checked out late the following morning. ‘Good Morning Mr Pyatt – checking out?’ chirped the unnecessarily enthusiastic receptionist. ‘Anything from the mini-bar?’ ‘It’s a little early for me but sure, why the hell not – I’ll have a beer’. I of course did not say this, for the following reasons.

1. She had the look of someone who didn’t exactly ache for witty repartee.
2. I was sure she’d heard that one before.
3. I was confronted with the same dilemma that I’m always confronted with when I check out of a hotel. Do you admit straight away that you’ve eaten the cashew nuts and Pringles and drunk three bottles of Stella, or do you lie, in the faint hope that whoever cleans the room after you have vacated it simply doesn’t notice that you’ve consumed half the contents of the fridge?

On this occasion, I ‘fessed up. ‘Yes, a bag of cashew nuts’. ‘That’s an extra $4.50 then Mr Pyatt’.

In anyone’s language that’s a pricey nut.

I killed some time in Adelaide (not easy to do – it’s a bit like Stockport but with sun…) until it was time to catch the coach to Clare – and so it was that come 7pm I was arriving in Clare amid rows and rows of vines and vineyards stretching as far as the eye can see. It’s a strange landscape really – on the one hand you have the vineyards which are all lush, fresh and green (due to the irrigation practiced by the growers) and then you have fallow fields and hayfields that are dry, arid and brown.

I finally found my way to my new house via a very helpful taxi driver and a phone call to the landlord (who was out) and knocked on the front door.

‘G’day mate, you must be Ally’.

This was Nick, and just behind him, Andy – two winemaking students from Adelaide who were to be my housemates for the coming weeks. I clocked a pair of Liverpool football shorts on Nick straightaway and soon we were getting to know one another over a bottle of local Riesling and a mutual loathing of Man Utd and Chelsea.

Since I arrived I’ve had three days of work at the winery. Things I’ve learned so far –, Caustic Soda burns, working outside in South Australia is bloody hot, wineries use hundreds of the biggest hoses you’ve ever seen, Sulfur Dioxide stinks, cleaning barrels turns your trainers purple, the water that comes out of the taps is rainwater, (something I found out after drinking a pint of it…) and most of all, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WINEMAKING! It’s great fun learning though.

(and by the way – a piece of advice. If you’re ever in this part of South Australia, please remember - changing your facebook status to ‘just arrived in Clare’ can cause confusion…)