Blenheim Wineries, My new home, Mussel Festival, & Farmers Market

 Wine tasting in Blenheim: This is Brancott Winery (formally known as Montana).  This is a Pernod Ricard Brand, and this is the largest producing winery in New Zealand.  

 

Brancott provides this viticulture Education site which shows a few different varietals and allows you to taste the grapes directly from the vine.

These are my new friends starting from the left: a winemaker from Italy, me, a winery lab technician from the Czech Republic, Monica, a cellar hand from France, and a Masters in Wine & Enology student from India.

This is the only place in Marlborough that does Methode Traditional sparkling wine.  The winemaker is from Champagne, and they import most of there bottles from France.  They also grow all of their vines just like they do in Champagne.  Excellent sparkling wines!

                                                This is my new home: The Central Lodge

 

                                                                                   

 Large backyard, complete with BBQ

And the best part.... a walk in closet!!!!  

Havelock Mussel Festival!! Live music, wine, beer and endless amount of Mussels, all different types of preparations

                                            

                

 The local Farmers' Market, held every Sunday, provides great fruits and vegetables, as well as live music, wine tasting and excellent Breakfast Burritos!

Blenheim and Indevin

I am getting settled into Blenheim and starting to explore the town before the vintage starts at Indevin.

This is Whites Bay, where you can go and collect local mussels off of the rocks.

   

The past two weeks at Indevin has been great! It has been filled with training, introductions and cellar tours. There are two seperate cellars, one dedicated to white wines and the other is dedicated to red wines. 

  

Here are some interesting facts about Indevin;

Indevin has 24 clients, the biggest being Waburn, Delegates and Winegrowers of ARA

This harvest Indevin is predicting we will produce 35,000 tons

Indevin is the secondest largest producer of wine in New Zealand closely behind Brancott (Montana) Winery

One in every Five bottles of wine from New Zealand for 2011 will be made at Indevin

The largest tanks they have is 250,000 Liters

The past two weeks have been very busy with clients bringing in grape samples.  We check the maturity level of the grape clusters.  This is where we collect the samples and process them.  

I check in the clients and collect their samples (sometimes as many as 40 from one client), and if they drop off the samples bye 12:30pm, they can have their results on SO2, Brix, and TA bye 6pm the same day. 

After checking in the samples we crush them in these machines before bringing them up to the lab to run the tests. 

 

We will start getting grapes in as early as next week and the first week of April will be the busiest time for us. The amount of people that will be working the harvest in the lab, and cellar will be more than 150 people! I will be taking more pictures next week and once we receive grapes and begin the busy harvest! Thank you everyone for reading, check back soon for more updates!