last days in melbourne.

Melbournians seem to have an unpublished, secret list of underground, seclusive hot spots in the city. As much as I wondered the city on my days off, as mush as I would get off the tram early to walk home instead of transferring, or as much as I would read about places in the local magazines, there are still multitudes of places I would have never noticed, hidden behind undisclosed doors, up flights of stairs, down dark alley ways. It seems as though the less acknowledgement that something exists behind a closed door, the cooler it is. There are roof tops you can see from the street, people filing out onto decks laughing and drinks in hand, but try as you may, there isn't a sign or a door leading or inviting you to join. After my last shift of work in Melbourne, I met up with my super flattie to celebrate. She, having lived here for the last two years and knowing all the cool spots, took me to such an alley way I would have never stumbled upon. As you enter, it looks as though you are entering a house, an open door to someone's home. As we walked up the creaky wooden stair case, we wandered into a bright emerald green painted room displaying a few photographs part of an Icelandic art exhibition. Two ladies in the small adjacent room were sipping sparkly out of flutes and quietly nodded a cordial hello. We meandered back downstairs to another open door that led into what looked like used to be a living room with a cozy fireplace. Above it was a chalkboard displaying the handwritten menu, the room filled with high-seated tables, and an alcove window looking into the kitchen.

A backdoor opened unto a little alley, lined along one side of the brick wall with wire tables adorned with glass vases , leading to a single toilet around the corner. It's these types of places that are so unassuming, yet have so much character that attract people out with the sunshine, and protects them from the perpetual rain.












Wine and cheese were to be had, naturally, as we basked in the late winter warmth of the afternoon and the sun slit through the shaft between the brick buildings promising a warm evening and warmer days to come.

 a little boy, with a cheeky smile took this photo for us on steph's iphone. 

The following day, my last day in Melbourne, was toasted with a lunch at Golden Fields, where I had been working but only able to drool over the food as I served it (almost, but not quite literally) but not experience it myself. Stephanie, having eaten there before and me, having seen the food so many times knew exactly what we wanted to order. It was a multiple-hour-long feast, to say the least, that started with complimentary glasses of champagne and ended after copious dishes and a decanter of white wine with not-so-complimentary cocktails. It was a fine way to spend the last day in Melbourne and ended with two more rooftop bars saying goodbye and toasting with the friends I had made there.

a "real" australian dinner.

Kangaroo and avo salad with box-o Aussie shiraz. 

One Last Road Trip in Great Southern.

As vintage slowly came to an end, we not only had a day to go on a road trip but also had two guests – the Sydney distributor and a sommelier who sells FE wines at his Sydney bar – to show around. First stop: the Rocky Gully Pub. A trip to Frankland wouldn’t be complete without the experience of the one and only local pub. We picked up some appropriately classy Emu Bitters and were on our way. 


We drove to Mt Barker and then even further out of town until we reached a little sign on the side road pointing down a driveway that said “Maleeya’s Thai Food.” Thai food on the outskirts of the Porongurup National Park might seem a bit odd, and maybe it was, but it was a tasty little treat. 


The petite Thai chef Maleeya has quite an impressive and international culinary background, including Le Cordon Bleu, and an equally impressive garden outside the restaurant where she grows not only 260 varieties of bamboo, edible plants, and exotic flowers, but the herbs and vegetables she uses in the kitchen. Her Swedish husband Peter served us the dishes that we shared along with the BYO wines we had brought. Being in what seems like the middle of nowhere and to amplify it's apparent randomness, the small dining room looks more like a tourist information center with its bright cedarwood, postcards for sale, posters of the surrounding area, and pictures of their home-range Highland cattle.

 If you’re ever in the area, be sure to stop by for some home-made locally grown Thai food, but be sure to call ahead if you’re a vegetaraian and be definitely sure to BYO!

With a wine maker, a wine distributer, a sommelier, and a wine business student, it was natural that we would go to one of the local wineries. There are quite a few in the area, but most are quite small and we went to one of the better known ones, Castle Rock. Set on a hill, Castle Rock has extensive views with the mountains in the distance. 

It was quiet as the father and son wine makers were hidden amongst the tanks, busy at work and unexpectant of visitors, but were happy to give us a tasting.

After lunch, there was talk about taking a walk, or a hike, up one of the local mountains to check out the views. After the recent hike, or walk, up Bluff Knoll and after a full lunch that included a peanut allergic reaction and glasses of wine, and then more wine at Castle Rock, I was on the side of dissuading this excursion. 

Luckily, we ultimately decided it was a bit late in the day and we were ill-equipped for a trip that the locals informed us would take longer than we had anticipated. 

But, we still had a bottle of Pinot Noir to drink, so Hunter drove us to a spot I am pretty sure is not in any guide books of the area.*

climbing up.
*(if such a book existed HA). 

wine on the hill.

nice day. 

ohmygoodness.

Agrizoophobia – fear of wild animals

Chiroptophobia – fear of bats

Entomophobia – fear/dislike of insects

Ergophobia – fear of work or functioning

Mottephobia – fear/dislike of butterflies and/or moths

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - fear of long words

ok, that one is just ridiculous, Wikipedia. 

I don't even think I have words for this blog post, but I just had to share what I found in my bucket of picked grapes this morning. I have shared the difference between hand picking and mechanical picking in terms of what we have to pick through and remove once the grapes are brought back to the winery. And I have explained how the bug and mice pickings are slim with handpicking, but I haven't described what you have to go through while hand picking to make that work back at the winery easier. Sure, the earwigs are crouched inside the snug bunches of grapes but generally you can grab the stem and not touch them. Yeah, there are spider webs but very rarely have I seen a spider (knock on wood). Of course I know what's potentially in the vines from seeing what is brought in, but this. 

I don't even know. 

As the grape picking goes, you have your clippers and move down the rows of vines with someone else on the other side picking the grapes on that side. It's a bit of companionship to get you through the work, keeps up the steady pace, and also makes the work easier as each person has better access to the grape stems depending on the direction they are growing off the vine.  Sometimes the grape bunches are completely entwined amongst the vine and having two people trying to find the stem is just a bit less burdensome on you and the grapes. You clip as quickly as you can, trying not to puncture the grapes so they don't oxidize, and cusp the bunch as you snip to gently throw into the bucket at your feet. As the bucket fills up, you push it into the vine so that the tractor comes along and can pick it up and move on to the next empty bucket waiting to be filled. 

So, today, as we just happened to be chatting about snakes, I look down at my nearly-full bucket and see something spotted and grey fluttering beneath a bunch of grapes. I bend down to look a little closer - I don't want any leaves or anythings to make my work back in the winery any harder - and slowly back off with hands on my hips as though to retain them from reaching into the bucket. I stare curiously wide-eyed at the pulsating bunches in the bucket. Luckily, we were in the middle of the row where the pickers coming from the other end met us. Andy sees my face and looks in my bucket. "It looks like a moth,"he says as he reaches in to brush aside the grapes so it can escape. "It looks like a Very Big moth." I'm slowly backing further away. He lifts it out, and it is absolutely humongous. I have never seen such an animal. I am not convinced it is a moth, although it looks like one, but it is the size of a bat.  

He places it onto the vine and it doesn't fly away.

Seriously, what is that thing.

"I've done my 5 hours, I'm outta here." - me

The wings span is incredible and the artwork is spectacular. But still, I'm freaked out about the size, the species, and how it got into my bucket........Did I touch it? don't.think.about.it.

The body is like a pine cone. 

I guess all I can say is that - all jokes aside he didn't eat me alive and he didn't carry me away - this Thing is lucky that I spotted it's fluttering and he didn't end up in the de-stemmer machine. But please, I don't want to see you again; as I had just texted Dad before I left to the vineyard, I quite like the grape picking; there is no room for fear in this line of work. 

Secondary Fermentation of Chardonnay

There is a room here just for Chardonnay. To access it from inside the winery, you have to sideways-walk between tall stainless steel tanks and then bend over to reach through the little door, watching your step in. When the white grapes come in and we pick out all the wildlife bits, the juice is racked (aka pumped) into these wooden barrels. With patience and precision, the winemaker can time exactly how long it takes to fill a barrel to the right level without overflowing.

The little science experiment turning this juice into wine causes airlock gauges to gurgle, filling the whole wooden room with a curiously calming and soothing sound - it's almost like quietly walking into a room with a baby monitor where you can hear the infant happily burble, babble, and drool in its dreams.

The fermentation lock on top is needed so that oxygen doesn't enter, but the carbon dioxide can escape; the pressure inside is pushing the gas up and out causing the bubbles in the airlock. When the bubbles stop, it is a clear sign to the wine maker that the (here, wild) yeast has eaten all the sugar. 

When you run out of such contraptions however, you can brilliantly use a bag of sand that is still malleable enough to yield to the carbon dioxide pushing it's way out. I'm pretty sure the spilled minor-explosion of juice on the barrel in the picture above is not a very good sign, but the soon-to-be-wine can easily be transferred to less-full barrels and the sticky juice wiped off. 

It's most likely the worst 25 second video you've ever seen. And the noise in the background is probably less of the fascinating fermentation and more of the bird-scarer outside (yes, there is such a noise and unfortunately is not silent to humans like a dog whistle. #birdpeckfree #goodwinesacrifices). But walking into the room full of bubbling barrels turning the grape juice into wine in front of you is really quite impressive. dramatic. miraculous.wonderful.

At least adjective-worthy enough for me to try to capture it with a dinky video. 

"What's brown and sticky? A stick." - 4 yr old Digby.

To determine whether or not grapes are ready to be picked, a few bunches are picked from a couple different locations within the block. Their total weight is divided by the number of bunches and then they are squished by hand into juice. The baume (sugar/density), pH, and acid levels are all tested from this grape juice to evaluate the development of the ripening grapes. 

When the grapes are ripe, depending on the test mentioned above, the variety, and the weather forecast they are ready to be picked! A lot of the vineyard blocks so far have been mechanically picked during the night when the moonlit air is cool and the machine is able to shine light upon the rows of vines. The importance of the quality of the air temperature is to ensure that the grapes are still cool when they are brought into the winery and they are not over-ripened by the heat of the day. Hand-picking is a much slower process that requires sunlight and more people to expedite the work that could take hours. However, light and visibility are not the only variables that factor into the choice between mechanically picked and hand picked. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. As can be seen in the morning-shot photos below, this block is quite close to the winery so the grapes have less distance to travel after being picked and speed of the mechanical pick means they stay out in the heat.

The machine goes through one row while a tractor in the adjacent row follows with a trail of bins for the grapes to be dumped into off an overhanging conveyor belt. 

Maybe "dump" sounds a bit aggressive.

Me standing above the grapes!

The machine gently vibrates the vines as it passes, dropping everything on the vines into it. "Everything" not only includes the bunches of grapes but also fallen leaves, snapped sticks, yanked twigs, doomed mice, pinched spiders, wangled earwigs, nesting birds, more seized spiders, gathered cockroaches, broken branches, and captured moths. This is called MOG: "material other than grapes." 

All of this is passed onto a conveyor belt that goes over the picked-vines and into the bins following the tracker in the other row. It's quite effective in terms of being faster than hand picking, covering many more rows and collecting more grapes (and MOG). It also requires less labour which is cheaper than paying the hourly rate for the manual labor (my ride up and down the row was free.)

The other option, hand picking, has it's own advantages as the picker goes through each row, vine by vine, and snips off the bunches of grapes from the stem with clippers. Usually you work with another person on the other side so that you can both move down the line, removing grapes on both sides rather than trying to reach through the tangled leafy vines. By hand picking, the picker also does not include (or technically, should not include) big vine stems or leaves, no one is adding mice to the little bins and can cut around bad bunches of grapes. It's laborious and requires swift skills to snip quickly as often the bunches have grown around the vines and finding the stem deserves crafty maneuvering. Hand picking can also be the way to go if the vines are young or if there are obstacles like power lines positioned through a row that the machine can not pass through with it's overhanging conveyor belt.

The buckets are filled down the row until they are filled to the top and pushed to one side so that the tractor with the trailing bins drives along with another person following who dumps the grapes into the bins. Ok, maybe "dumps" is more aggressive here because hand picking is definitely more gentle on the grapes rather than being vibrated off the vine by machine, often causing a bit of squishing or skin tear, which could cause oxidation or not work for "whole-bunch" pressings.

It's hard to see when you can't cut the leaves.
Sometimes down on your knees.
 Sometimes getting up under and in the vines to see.
Sometimes the little bits of dried grass against the shin cause frantic thoughts of spiders.
But always a nice little sugary snack to keep you going.

After the picking is completed, we meet these compiled bins in the winery and then have to sort through the grapes on another conveyor belt to get rid of any MOG. Not every winery does this next step, but we sort through both mechanically and hand picked grapes. The mechanically picked grapes obviously have many more MOG particles, bits and pieces than the hand picked selection and really makes a difference on the scale of fear-factor nervous-anticipation during work. Our job of sorting through the pickings is not only important to prevent the damage a chunky stick could do to the press and other machinery, but the removal of the MOG makes a substantial difference in the quality of the wine you want to make. Every load is different though. Sometimes there are lots of bugs, sometimes there are just lots of leaves. 

One day, as we were sorting through the clusters of Poison Hill Riesling grapes, (one of our favorites out of the 3 of 4 Rieslings of theirs we have tasted) it was particularly full of large sticks, thick twigs, and entire leaves still attached to the branch, yet remarkably lacking a legion of insects.  Reaching into the grape juice to pull out the MOG for a long amount of time quickly covers your fingers and hand in a sugary syrup. (I had hopefully thought the juice would be full of grape antioxidants and act as an anti-wrinkle-grandma-hand-remedy, but instead the constant wetness and stickiness dries out my fingers, causing them to crack. More band-aides.) We were pulling out abounding sticks and twigs whizzing by on the conveyor belt that we couldn't believe the size or amount of, and as I looked down at my hands covered in viscous grape juice with little bits of crushed green grapes sticking to them, I said to Felix, "This is especially sticky today." He laughed and said, "Yeah, in a double meaning of the word."

pause.

pause.

stare.

Bahahaha 

I get it. 

And I'm even the native English speaker. 

A bit later, in between the sticks, twigs, and branches, we saw only two spiders but both of unbelievable staggering size and astonishing color that I made some sort of squealing noise causing everyone to look at me as I convulsed in absolute sheer horror, waving my soggy hands in disgust as I nearly fell off the box crate. I wanted to puke, then faint, then run away, but could only laugh at myself. 

Two ill-fated birds with their grey feathers drenched and matted also passed by in a heavy-hearted horror. 

Felix goes, "Now you know why Poison Hill tastes so good."

W(h)ining.

Not everything is learning about wine, frolicking in the vineyards, and drinking lots of wine.

Sometimes it's about impressing guests. Sometimes it's about cleaning the winery. Sometimes it's about putting your headphones on and getting down to some hard core power-washing the floors. Sometimes it's about really enjoying the power-hose and seeing the different colored floor being revealed underneath the layer of wine-stains. Sometimes it's about helping with the cooking. Sometimes it's about volunteering to do the dishes. Sometimes it's about eating two carb-hearty meals a day before 1pm and eating it all because you're hungry and it's in front of you, and then being invited to dinner and saying yes and eating more because it's free and homemade. Sometimes it's about pretending to look busy and refilling your water bottle because you're not sure what else to do. Sometimes it's about cleaning out the stainless steel tanks. Sometimes it's about having work nightmares but those nightmares include spiders, not presentations or conference calls. Sometimes it's about taking the leftover and/or half-opened bottles of wines because no one else wants them and enjoying them yourself. Sometimes it's about walking into a room or your house and looking up at the ceiling and along the walls, almost always unwillingly, to see what creature might be lurking above. Sometimes it's about sneaking in some iChats early in the morning as it's the best time to converse with a 13 hour time difference. Sometimes it's about being a stereotype. Sometimes its about going to bed at 9pm and sometimes it's about having to be at work at 1:30am. Sometimes it's about being a girl squealing at squashed birds, gagging at drowned mouse, and convulsing at ginormous spiders as they pass by on the grape-press conveyor belt with the guys making fun of you. Sometimes it's about labeling wine bottles with the appropriate and necessary export stickers. Sometimes it's about taking the 5 hours of WWOOF work requirement and then sitting on the internet to catch up on "real-life" while the work outside in the winery continues. And sometimes it's ok to be alright with that. Sometimes it's about sticking around until the work is done to receive that cold, rewarding beer to drink with the guys.

And then sometimes, when it is about the wine, and you have no idea what you are doing, it's ok to make a mistake like letting oxygen into the tube, or water into the tank. Because the details were not explicit and the questions were not known to be asked. Well, let's just hope that sometime's it's ok.

It is all about the in's and out's of a successful, functioning winery of a family-run Estate. So, yeah, sometimes it really is about learning about wine, frolicking around the vineyard, and drinking good wine. 

Some Pics of Frankland Estate

Coming over the hill from town, the first sight of the Estate

View of the winery and the vines 

View looking towards the road (pic #1), it's not a great picture, but the vast rows of vines are quite mesmerizing

 Early morning sunrise (same viewpoint as the previous pic)

The Veranda in the back of the winery. A place for sunny lunches and internet chats. 

The guinea fowl that roam the property are incredibly noisy and funny as they chase after each other

The lambs also roam the property and are quite scared if you walk up close to them or drive by them

 The shed. 

Blue skies over the vines.

Pretty and Peaceful. 

Sunset over the vines. 

“Harvest is Away!”

This is what 4:30am looks like. 

The beginning of the second week, the last week of February, was the start of Harvest. The fruit was being picked at 3:30 to avoid the heat of the day and we arrived at 5am for it’s arrival. The fruit on this day was mechanically-picked which means there is a truck that drives through a line separating the rows of vines with a contraption that collects the fruit from the vine. The grapes go through this vessel to be somewhat sorted then moved up along a conveyor belt that brings them across the vine row and collects onto a crate that another tractor in the next line of vines is pulling. 

sun rises as work begins

These crates, when full and the row of vines is emptied of it's bounty, are then brought into the winery. A fork lift dispatches the grapes in the crate into a huge container, which releases the grapes, along with the vineyard’s other lively and wild collection, onto a conveyor belt.

  That’s where we have to sort through the collection as it whizzes by.  Sorting means we get rid of any leaves, stems or thick branches the mechanical-picking grabbed along the way and also, as I soon found out, picking out the spiders (dead or alive), mice (only dead that I saw), squiggling earwigs, writhing cockroaches, squished moths, and all sorts of little things found in the wildlife of a vineyard. I literally could not pull out anything except for the leaves and the twigs. Any spider or mouse or creature, I gasped and would have thrown up onto the conveyor belt or fainted off the box crate I was standing on if I had to touch and take out any such thing. Luckily, I was not the last person upon the line before the grapes and “collection” went into the machine so I did not feel so responsible, although I would openly admit my refusal to remove and acceptably knowing that I allowed something to pass by my reach.

The machine would sort out some of the debris, mostly stems, pump the grapes and juice into a chiller, and then into the press. The press would sort out the liquid from the debris (re: “collection) and the debris would settle at the bottom. So all those mice and spiders and insects that the machine-picker collects, are filtered out, but I’m pretty sure they add to the complexity of the wine, to the terroir. Rohan said that when he was working for a winery in Melbourne they would find huge lizards on the line….that, for sure, is part of the terroir – whether the bugs in the vineyard are little lady bugs or reptiles, it's all part of the climate and the land that makes the grapes taste the way they do. 

Our job to go through picking out the bits on the conveyor belt is to help the press by not having big sticks causing a bit of damage nor do they want the leaves and other things spending time with the grape juice by infusing any unwanted flavours. Add that to your list of wine vocabulary: MMMMousey.  

Looking back, the mouse is almost bearable after seeing a twitching poisonous redback spider on top of the line. The striking red line against it’s black body just stared at me daringly as I wide-eyed watched it go by in absolute horror. I doubt I will ever get that image out of my head. But, that is the difference between hand-picking and mechanically-picking. Hand-picking would not include big twigs or mice – maybe some earwigs and spiders and definitely some leaves, but whoever is cutting big branches off the vine and grabbing mice is an idiot picker.

the grape juice after it goes through the press to be pumped into tanks

It's a different kind of hard work. My body wasn't in physical pain like from bottling, but it includes long hours of standing, getting your hands wet and sticky from the grape juice, and it is pretty chilly in the dark early hours of the morning. It’s definitely a dizzying job watching the bunches of light green grapes go by with your hands ready to grab whatever is different – a sunburned crinkled brown leaf, a dark green leaf still attached to a clustered bunch of grapes, a brown stick or curly vine twig - but then there are different colours that stick out from the light green grapes such as the gnarled spiders that have drowned, the multitudes of earwigs swimming in the clear grape juice, the spiders that are still alive crawling the opposite way on the line away from their doomed death to be squeezed in the press, the huge  at least 2 inches long light brown cockroaches wriggling on their back….Anything that is not a grape, instinct tells your hands to reach out and remove it. I’ve gotten pretty good as the belt goes by, grabbing what I can in a wave of blurred-green dizziness, but my instinctive reflex to not grab something particularly nasty are even better. I need to work on my peripheral vision to anticipate what’s coming next and improve my recognition skills to process what I am about to grab before I really do squeal and pass out from some unwanted interaction with vineyard wildlife.

We all agree we should insist on handpicked grapes.