Days 110-114: Week 2 on the Winery

Another week, and more picking and crushing.  Not so many pictures of that, although still a few.  I am, however, still doing #hipstergrace whenever possible.  The light here is so good for it, and after a bottle of wine or a beer, I can't help myself.

Taco night, with home made tortillas.

Ah yes, and now we start picking reds for Rose.

Red wines are crushed, fermented, and then pressed to remove the skins.  Rose is made by using red grapes, but pressing almost immediately after crushing so that very little of the color is released into the liquid.  So someone, in this case, Dela, has to jump in the vat to bucket it out.

Fun with Chardonnay and sunsets.

At Wallington Wines, there are sheep.  They are shedding sheep (they don't need to be sheared, and aren't raised for the wool) but are kept for meat, and to keep the weeds down.  Which means that occassionally they are herded into the already picked vines to nibble away at the grass and other weeds growing there.  No spray=organically controlled weeds.

Self referential humor.  In the form of a sign on top of a hill in the back section of the property.  Good times.

The view of the winery from the hill.  You can see how much dryer the grass looks compared to when we first arrived, too.

The Mount Nangar Forest where we hiked the previous weekend.  The views from here were pretty great.

And with that, one more week down.  Molly and I were thinking it was about time to go.  We still have a lot of travelling to do, and wanted to head back to New Zealand before it got too late in the season.  We have a weekend, and then we're off!

Day 108-109: Weekends on the Winery and Surroundings

A small perk of working at the winery was the use of a car.  This weekend, we decided to take advantage.  We drove to a local national forest area, which actually borders the back of the property we were working on, but has no access except for a dirt road 45 minutes away.  (This being Australia, and not New Zealand, we were not going to bushwack to get there.  We'd either be bitten by something poisonous, eaten by a dingo, or a combination of both.)

So we saw a lot of Australia's most famous fauna.

See the ears?

There's another one!

Cheeky fellow.  The kangaroos are essentially Australia's dear.  They fill the same ecological niche, and are about as prevalent.  They're fascinating to watch, too.

Normally, that is a waterfall.  Actually, normally is the wrong word.  Sometimes, that is a waterfall.  You'll note that Australia is much dryer than NZ.

Much much dryer.

The view from the top of Mount Nangar.  Anywhere in the center of Australia is also much much flatter than New Zealand.  But it was cool to look over the Canowindra/Orange area.

It's not all hiking and sweating here.  Sometimes there is wine!  Actually, often there is wine.

And today we decided to go with our old party trick:  Making pizza from scratch.

Pizza, Sunset, and Rose.  Very very good Rose.

A view of the winery by night.

The man knew something about drinking, I'm sure.

We took a trip to Milthorpe, and visited a couple cellar doors for wine tastings.  Life is hard when there is too much wine.

Followed, when we arrive back at the winery, by a pool party with more wine.  Margaret invited a few friends from town over, and we drank and ate the rest of the day away.

So many dogs. 

Many, many dogs.

All the dogs!

Squid and greens, charred to perfection on the grill.

And fancy Hokey Pokey (as it is called in New Zealand) or Honeycomb (as it is called in Australia.  It's sugar baked with baking soda.

And the next day, back to work!