Corner 50

Three months to the day after my last day at PwC I started working at Corner 50 winery.  Due to the uncharacteristically cold and wet summer, I started 2 weeks later than originally contracted, and even then there wasn’t much to do.  It was pouring rain on my first day, and so I was issued a giant, heavy, yellow rain coat, giant, heavy, yellow rain pants, and gum boots to wear.  The work as a cellar hand involves giant wrenches and huge hoses being hooked up to 25-, 30-, 50-, 100-, and even 200-thousand liter tanks (they are enormous!), and my Spanish roommate Marta likened us to Mario Bros with our silly-looking yellow rain suits and giant wrenches, which made me laugh.  It wasn’t long until we were working weekends and got slotted into shifts, some working 7am to 7pm and the rest working 7pm to 7am.  The work is very physically demanding, but it is sorta fun and learning more about the winemaking process is definitely interesting.  Long days at the winery make me tired in a very different way than long days staring at a computer screen…

After unsuccessfully searching for affordable housing in town, I am living out in the country with some friends of the lab worker’s, which is great.  It is so gorgeous out here (partly because it has rained all summer so everything is still green), and still so uninhabited – I pass mayyyyybe one car on my 15 minute drive to work each day, and about 10 houses, 7 of which are in the center of the little town of Maraekakaho, which has a school and a bar and nothing else.  Literally there is no grocery store, no gas station, no restaurants, nothing.  I have to drive 40 minutes to get to the nearest town.  The winery is in between here and town, but slightly closer to home.  This is great because it forces me to plan my eating well, as every meal is from home and grocery store trips are infrequent at best.  They are not always home-cooked, because a lot of the time it is just a sandwich or cereal or something, but I do not eat out except on the rare occasions of a day off and co-workers hanging out in town.  Very different from working in downtown SF, where most people just go outside, walk 10 feet, and buy a sandwich, or walk a little further to be in range of Italian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Burgers, Salads, etc for sale.  A few pictures from and of the house:

I like inoculating wine because the yeast smell reminds me of mom's home cooked pizza crust.

I will try to take some pictures from the winery soon because there are great views from the catwalks on top of the huge tanks.  Check this post again for that later!