Austen's Vintner Adventure '25

I wish I could report a more exciting Week 1 - but it was mostly filled with corporate culture, health & safety, and general best practice trainings - all riveting stuff. Most topics are fairly intuitive and not entirely new from my time in California a few years ago. The scale here is quite large though, comparatively. This harvest, we are aiming to process around 17 tons of grapes at our site alone, but there will be another 60+ tons across the various Indevin-owned wineries across NZ. Stonestreet (CA winery) was fewer than 5 tons, so laying eyes on a massive 225,000 liter tank for the first time here was quite a shock. We'll be producing ~85% sauvignon blanc, which was what Marlborough is known for, with the remainder made up of Chardonnay (sparking included) Pinot Gris, Riesling, Pinot Noir, and Rose. There's about 40 of us seasonal workers and ~15 permanent staff in the cellar. One of the coolest parts of this experience so far is meeting folks from all corners of the ...

After hiking in Arthur's Pass, I headed towards my Airbnb/motel for a Saturday night stay in Springfield (no Six Flags in this Springfield unfortunately). The short stay was excellent, with a welcoming host, friendly neighbors from Finland, and a hot tub all to myself. Not bad for a low-cost housing option with a bed & roof, which are luxuries I wouldn't have the following night. I then drove 2-3 hours back out to the east coast of the South Island, towards a town called Kaikoura to camp for a night. Kaikoura (translated to 'crayfish' in Maori, New Zealand's native language) was a picturesque seaside town with mountains in sight and a nice walking path around its peninsula. After checking out a bustling seal colony and having a swim at one of the black sand beaches, I continued on towards my beachside campsite. Man, it was some of the clearest and most impressive stargazing areas I've witnessed (Milky Way was in fact visible).  My first few days continued to...

I started Friday 2/21 in my Christchurch hostel ready to start exploring NZ's famous scenery. With more time, I would have driven down to Akaroa, a french fishing village about 90 minutes from Christchurch (per a Courtney S. suggestion), but I had a beast of a mountain to climb that day. I decided instead to drive 20 minutes down to Lyttleton, which is a small seaside harbor town, for some coffee and light breakfast. This is where I first witnessed the Kiwi kindness, as my servers got a kick out of seagulls terrorizing my breakfast and happily served me a replacement plate. The servers even brought me a loaded water/squirt gun in order to fend off any more carnivorous birds that came my way. I hopped into the neighboring grocery store to pick up hiking ("tramping" according to Kiwis) snacks and lunch food before driving ~2 hours west into a mountainous region called Arthur's Pass. I chose a path called Avalanche Peak, which was correctly advertised as a VERY steep inc...

My travels started with a JetBlue (who else) flight from Boston to LA, where I endured a 12 hour layover, which I spent sitting on the beach with my book, some travel snacks, and birria tacos. Unfortunately my LA-based friends were all busy working on a Tuesday afternoon (weird), so I spent some time planning my upcoming first few exploratory days in NZ. I flew out of LA Tuesday (2/18) night, stopped in Fiji for 2 hours, and then landed in Christchurch, NZ, on Thursday afternoon local time. I hope my dad forgives me that I completely missed Wednesday the 19th, which happens to be his birthday!! Don't worry, I called from the Fiji airport, which he found quite amusing. After picking up my rental car from the airport, I checked into my hostel and walked downtown to explore. Christchurch was a lovely town that reminded me of a small Southern city (a Savannah or Austin type). Trolley-like trams travelled down the middle of the road, and young people were abound, which likely had to do ...