Pablo!

Wente has brought in a Chilean intern to work for the year. His name is Pablo, and he is very entertaining. I found out that he takes videos with his digital camera to show things going on in the states to his family, and then he posts them all on youTube. (good idea, no?) They're in Spanish (obviously), but I want to share this one with you all. He's in the winery standing over a fermenting bin of red wine. He is so funny!

Please also note the loud Mexican music that is blaring in the background of the video...and still blares everyday.




Cheers

Going to California

Arhhhhhnold ;-)


You know what?? There are a lot of songs about California. Heaps of songs about the state. There are a few about New York, even fewer about Washington or Pennsylvania. And by some of my favorite artists. Tupac, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zeppelin.

It only makes sense that I would have to live there to see if all of the songs are true, right? Feel the "California Love"?

Okay, so it wasn't exactly for that reason, but I am taking my current living situation as a good excuse to listen to an obscene amount of Tupac and Led Zeppelin. (For those who are unaware of my musical tastes, I do have a preference for some pretty ridiculous rap music.)

Here's the annotated story. Vintage in WA finished in early November. I had been looking for a job anywhere, but had made up my mind that I would stay on the west coast if that meant that I got to working in the wine industry. That being said, most of my opportunities were bound to exist in California. I got a cal about a week after vintage finished for an interview in Napa. Being that I had a place to stay in Napa, with My Aunt Deb and Uncle Ed, I told the woman I could be there Monday. In true rockstar fashion, I threw all of my shit in my car, had my cable cut, called Chris (my room mate in Wenatchee), and drove to California.

I arrived in Napa and had not only a place to stay, but a kick ass place to stay! I got an opportunity to know a few people that I wouldn't have normally know and had a fantastic time. Plenty of gin and tonics (and wine!) were consumed and I, quite frankly, wish I could stay in the Napa area. Napa is the perfect sized place for me. ~75k people, nice weather, green, lots of dogs, plenty of stuff to do, and san fran within reach. And lots of wine! And wine people! Hell, the street names are wine related. Hello! Amazing! And, of course, if I was able to stay in Napa, I would have been much closer to the people who took care of me, that I have come to love dearly, and that I enjoy very much!

As fate and my luck would have it, I got a job in the wine industry, but not in the Napa Valley. I took a lab tech job in a small city called Livermore, which is down bay from Napa by about 1.25 hours (in no traffic, of course). After about 1.5 months of feeling broke, helpless, and hopeless, I interviewed at Wente Family Estates and bam, job offer, which I took. In a whurlwind, Deb and I went to Livermore and got me an apartment. A few days later, thanks mostly to the help of Deb and Ed, the majority of my stuff was moved in Livermore.

So, I haven't started work yet, but I start tomorrow. 4 days a week, 10 hour shifts. The salary is not quite what I had hoped, so I'll have to get a job or two to supplement my income, but that's nothing new for me.

Definitely going to be a new experience. A New Yorker in Cali, living alone, working at an 800k case/ year winery (!?). I'm looking forward to it.

If you're wondering about Australia, that dream will have to be deferred for a while. Mostly due to financial problems! No surprise there. I will, at the very least, go back to Australia for a vintage. After I get my ducks in a row and my shit straightened out.

So, that's the short version. Now I am caught up and can blog at will. I will try to do so regularly.

Cheers

I know I suck.

I know I know, It's October first and I've left you hanging by a thread since the beginning of August. I really HATE writing review entries, and I knew my life was destined to be one big review blog entry when I left Australia on 3 August.

So, let's start there. I left Australia in a blur. Thanks to some good friends, I was able to enjoy my last night in Wagga and was felt a great deal of sorrow to see the place go. When I stepped on the train to go to Sydney, it all went wrong. The guy that I was assigned to sit next to me was a total douchebag, so I got no sleep from midnight until 730 am. I got to the airport and United that they had lost (or "deleted") my reservations, then they claimed I owed them money when I definitely did not. This made me swear out against United and hate all things around me. And probably cause more of a scene than I should have. (Lots of luggage makes me testy.) But, I didn't learn my lesson because I ended up getting an upgrade because they knew that they had fucked up. It was only an upgrade to their economy plus section, but you're not going to catch me being ungrateful.

I arrive home like 36 hours later, still on August the third. I came into DC and spent a few enjoyable days with Jen in Frederick, before braving another plane to get to Rochester. After having a good sleep, I realized that I looked, sounded, and felt like an alien in my own country. And, that feeling as stuck with me some of the way until now, but frankly, I'm just too exhausted to honor any feelings except tired these days.

I spent a therapeutic two or so weeks at home, seeing the family and friends that I had spent months longing to see...and for good reason! They're fantastic! My life blood!

All the while, I missed Australia. It's like a constant dull ache. Forgettable sometimes, but not usually. I've kept in contact with a few of my mates there pretty steadily, and I miss them dearly. I miss the whole bloody thing, and I didn't think I would!

Anyway, the next part of my journey was to drive across the country with my Mom. It was an amazing experience. Mom and I knew it was going to be ridiculous when we drove through a tornado on day one coming through Toledo. (Fuckin' Ohio, it figures!) The journey flew east of the Mississipi, but as soon as we crossed over, life slowed down a bit. We saw towns with a posted population of 10 (Emblem, WY) and stayed in towns where we ate our first buffalo roast and stood out as definite city slickers. (Are you freaking kidding me?) Yellowstone, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, Bighorn National Forest...that's a limited list of what we saw! I fear that the journey will never get proper ode in my blog because it has all ready past, but I will do my best to recount its tales as I can.

Our journey ended in Wenatchee, WA, my current place of residence. (Actually Seattle, where Mom flew out of.) So far the internship has been going well. I am beat. I am sore. I have never been so tired in my life. But, I'm making wine god damnit, and I couldn't dream of doing anything else.

The picture is the view from my place. Yes, that is the Columbia River. It also over looks a drive in. Cheers to free movies on the weekends, although I don't really remember what a weekend is, per se. :-P Pretty sweet, right?

Cheers

Personality

Sorry guys, I've got to talk shop for this one. Bear with me.

Okay, so, I don't know everything about wine, but I know a damn good bit more than most people on the street. Most "wine people" and I disagree on a few things, but, hear me out.

In order to impress me, a wine doesn't necessarily need to embody every single one of its token varietal characteristics. I want my subtle and silky Pinot Noirs as much as I want my bold and spicy Shirazes, but there is something to be said of wine with personality. There's something to be said of PEOPLE who actually have personality, likewise. If a wine doesn't have any glaring defects or faults, sometimes a bit of personality is a good thing. So, it may not be exactly what a wine judge wants to see, whether it be "too light" or "not true to variety"...if it can support it's own voice, it has a possibility for success with the open minded and flexible.

This is exactly why I LOVE the wine from the Finger Lakes. Never mind that I was born in the Finger Lakes, although I'm sure that that has something to do with it. :-P Finger Lakes wines are cool climate, and, for the most part, are unlike any wines I've seen here (obviously). They may not be, for example, true to form big, ridiculous tannic Cabernet Sauvignons, but they generally have flavor and form, and they have PERSONALITY, a certain uniqueness. They are regional and they tell the tale of the winery and those people who worked to prepare its outward characteristics. Many can call this personality "terrior", which is, essentially, a signature of where the wine comes from. But, it's actually a lot more. It's a story. And, due to the size of the region, most, if not all, Finger Lakes wines have a STORY. An interesting story, too! We're certainly not making a whole lot of wine relatively speaking, so livelihoods, blood, sweat, and tears go into making our wines. That special attention, combined with the cool climate characteristics and the varietal, give our wines our signature, their personality.

If straight, predictable varietal characters do it for you, then fair enough. But, if it doesn't; don't get hung up on what a Riesling or a cab is supposed to taste and smell like. It's a nice guide, but, firstly it varies from area to area, so try to look at the wine as a part of a whole, the end to a story. How does it show to you? And most importantly: do YOU like the story it has to tell you? Robert Parker (who is a bloody bullshitter, if you ask me) is doubtfully going to be drinking wine with you anytime soon, so be sure that you select a wine with a story that you want to be part of!

DISGUSTING?!

Australians. Crack. Me. Up. They're known for being one of the most laid back countries, in fact, this reputation precedes them globally. They, in theory, shouldn't ever worry about anything. There motto is "No worries, mate."

But, the truth is, it's true, they don't freak out about the big stuff. You know, life decisions and the like...things that a person SHOULD freak out about, they have a very laxadazical (sp?) attitude about. But, about STUPID things, they freak out. Today, in my pinot seminar, the woman sitting next to me was being a real irritable kid all day. When one of the last speakers was speaking, the poor old guy didn't have his presentation loaded onto the screen. So, they had to go get one of the Conference Centre tech guys to load it. In the meantime, he started talking about what he had researched. This lady next to me started like chucking all of her stuff into her bag and start talking REALLY loudly about how "disgusting" this was. Disgusting!? DISGUSTING!? That's not exactly the word that I would use for it.

So, we Americans freak out about everything, but, probably not about the poor man loading his PPT presentation. Who's better off? I can tell you who's funnier, that's for sure!

Cheers

Opa!

A week or so ago now, I went home with one of my favorite Australians, Marissa, to stay with her family for a few nights after our biochem final finished. The plan was to go "to the snow" so that she and her sister could do some skiing. I don't ski (obvi), but I went along really just to prove to myself that there was snow in Australia. (There is, really.)

In any case, it was nice to be with a family again. Twentysomethings make a nice temporary family, but there's something comforting about being around someone else's Mom and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents that makes you feel, in a strange way, closer to your own. Marissa's grandfather, whom they call Opa, so that is what I know him as, is quite possibly the cutest Australian I've seen! He's an older guy, and he lives in White Cliffs, NSW. White Cliffs is about as outback as it gets. As Marissa explained it to me, they don't actually have a hospital or doctors there, the doctors fly in once a week. (Strange concept for an industrialized nation, no?) What happens mostly in White Cliffs is opal mining. The above photo is a picture of the opal mines taken from the air. (I have a postcard if you want to see.) It gets up to 50 degrees C (well over 100 F) in here in the summer time, "in the shade!", according to Opa. Opa never wears anything on his feet but thongs, and he is wrinkly and sunburned all the time because of the heat. He's not fussed by the heat at all, he said, he reckons that it doesn't really matter to him how hot it is (!). In Albury, where I was, he was most uncomfortable because he had to wear a shirt, socks, and shoes on account of the cold. He had even fallen ill when he was in the cold, poor guy. He was born in Germany, but came to Australia over 50 yrs ago as a tradesmen, and now mines opals as a retirement project (?!). He had this special German liquor made from distilled hot peppers (don't remember what it was called), but he calls it his cold medicine. I had a bit of a cough at the time as well, so he suggested that I try it as well. It was good stuff, and it did take away my cough with just one shot! He was really remarkable. I got an invite to go up to White Cliffs and mine opals with him along with an opal to take home with me, and I fully intend on taking him up on it.

This may well be my last entry from Australia, but I hope it's not. I'm currently in Adelaide at the Australian Wine Industre Technical Conference enjoying my last week in Oz. I am essentially homeless, as I have vacated my room in Wagga and my bags are living at Marissa and Declan's place. Homeless! I am taking a night off from the pub tonight, I'll let my winery boys handle that tonight. Good conference so far...lots of wine dorks in one place. :-P

Anyway, I'm nearly out of internet credit, so I will be heading.

Cheers

Speaker used this quote today, really liked it:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

--Mary Oliver, the summer day

Old Man

He's mad at me in this picture! Hehe!

I am VERY sorry that I haven't been in blog touch lately. I have been a bit busy with residential schools (they really SUCK, btw) and I just haven't felt like blogging lately. I know I'll kick myself for not blogging the past month as I am less than a month from leaving, but, I often kick myself for less.

For those of you who were unaware, my Casey, my old man and very best friend, died in late June. I got the call from Mom on a Saturday night here while I was in Sydney. It's been a rough few weeks for me, and it will be even rougher when I get home and realize that my bestest bud isn't there to greet me. My house and room and bed and sweater drawer will have an strange emptiness to them, I know it all ready. I'm sure he's happier, he's in better place where he can be young and vibrant, and it's assured that I wont dress him in my doll clothes, put him in my baby buggy, and wheel him up to grandmas. I can't believe he'll never look up at me again or rub his cold wet nose on my hand in search of a pet. I feel monsterously guilty for not being there with him, especially considering that he was there for me every time I cried for, oh, about 17 years, and I went off, knowing damn well that he'd need me in his darkest hour while I was away. I can't believe I wasn't there for him. Good thing Mom was. I hope he knew that I still loved him.

Other than that, life as been moving on at a pretty average pace. I had an outstanding birthday, made that way by a few people that I didn't know really cared! I really couldn't have asked for more, especially considering that I was expecting to spend the day alone.

Other than that, I've been doing res schools. The first was 6 days of straight tasting. Which sounds glamourous, but it's actually not as glam as you would think. This may sound completely ridiculous, but it reasonably difficult to taste that much wine in a day. Your senses just tire, and you get sick of it. I know I know, my life is clearly hard. I got to taste wine for 8 hrs a day for 6 days straight. Now, the fates are repaying me, and I'm doing 8 hr blocks of biochemistry labs. You cannot deny that THAT doesn't sound fun.

But, I return to the states in just over 2 weeks. I am having incredibly mixed emotions about it. I am excited to see the people that I miss and love, but I feel like I'm leaving something incredible behind. Didn't I just feel like this?!

Well, Alison, there you have it. I hope I have entertained you for a few moments. :-)

Cheers
Catrina