From February to April this year I worked the Australian vintage as a cellar hand at [DETAIL: which winery and region?]. I finished my enology degree in 2015, and the southern hemisphere runs opposite to us, so the timing worked: graduate, fly, work.
It was the warmest summer Australia has recorded, and the fruit came in early and all at once. The slow ramp everyone promised never arrived; the crush pad was flat-out from my first week. Twelve-hour shifts, days rotating into nights, six and sometimes seven days a week. By week three my legs were gone in a way no degree program prepares you for.
Two moments stayed. The first dig-out: tank drained, gas monitor clipped on and cleared, then in through the door with a shovel to pitch the wet marc out, steam coming off the pile. And the morning rounds, Baumé and temps onto the clipboard at the same tanks every day, watching the numbers fall exactly the way the textbooks said they would. Most of the hours, though, were cleaning. Caustic, then citric, then rinse, then drag the hoses to the next tank.
The crew was backpackers and traveling winemakers on working-holiday visas, from everywhere, and the end-of-vintage party is a fixture for a reason. The verdict around the cellar was a good year, not a classic one. Eight months on I can still hear a pump-over running when it's quiet. I'd do another.
— Lo