ROFL!!

Hehee. It's an expression, (more common in NZ then elsewhere methinks, we
even had it in a TV ad)

Also, I don't do that sort of thing since I got out of jail*. ;-)

Heh! If I was a luck-thief this wouldn't be my first SoJ now would it? ;-)

Thanks for the rodents in a line. <g>

Thanks Mark. :-)

Thanx. :-)

Ouch indeed. I've "only" been playing since '01. Started SP and hit B-nuts
around early '04. I found a couple SoJ's during SP/LAN play.

Indeed.

No, he doesn't say anything the grumpy old fart.

Well, it was red..... I'm afraid I can't afford "good" wine these days Most
people don't realise that, personally, that's a tragedy. My pallette is
*very* well educated. (To the extent of (used to) being able to say to
winemakers "The malo-lactic fermentation that that Gewutz-Traminer went
through really mellows it" Or "I don't know why you used new American oak
barrels for that chardonnay, it would really have really benefitted from
French Nevers, as it is the oak is overpowering and coarse" and getting
amazed looks. There aren't many people who can pick things like that). I
spent a good portion of my life working in wineries/wine
laboratories/cellars/vineyards. To the extent that a new multi-million $$
start-up winery offered me the job of head winemaker on the strength of a
few excellent wines I'd made. (It's all in the fruit, all a winemaker has to
do is know the process and not make any mistakes). However, I'd always had
the benefit of great winemakers around me, free with their advice. The job
was in South Island, miles away from anyone I knew. I was too young and
lacked confidence to do it by myself. So I turned them down.

My wine of choice is a robust Australian Shiraz. The best wine I ever made
was a Shiraz. The chief winemaker where I was working "stole" it from me....

Little story if you'll bear with me. I was working at a wine reasearch
centre, govt. funded. At the time I was a cellar hand (The govt. doesn't
like to give you big titles, that means they have to pay you more) and it
was the end of vintage. I'd been operating the small-scale crusher and was
told one morning to pull it down, clean it and put it in storage until next
year.

However, on my last trip around the vineyard I remember seeing some Shiraz
(Petit Syrah, Hermitage, depends on what part of the world you live in) that
looked nice but didn't remember them going through the crusher. I asked the
vineyard manager and he said that he'd been told thet they weren't required
for any winemaking trials, they were part of a viticultural study on virus
infection in vines, and now were being left to rot on the vines. At
lunchtime I asked my boss if I could have the afternoon off, but pick and
crush these grapes as a little side project, I'd also clean the crusher in
my own time. I was given the OK.

Now these vines didn't have a lot of fruit on them. They had one of the main
viruses that were common then, tobacco leaf virus or leaf-curl virus, I
don't remember. The thing about a sick plant is that it puts everything it
has into trying to ensure the next generation will survive. All it's energy
is put into the fruit, As I said, there wasn't a lot (there were only four
rows of vines) and the birds had been at it too. I spent the whole afternoon
meticulously hand-picking and selecting the grapes, removing bird-pecked
berries from some bunches, until I had around 100kg of fruit.

I put it through the crusher and innoculated it with a beaker of vigorously
fermenting Cabernet Franc to add the yeast. (I was there until 10pm cleaning
the crusher) After about three weeks of fermenting on the skins I put it
through the press and ended up with about 65 litres of 'wine'. I put it in a
large glass fermenting vessel and put it in the climate-controled
micro-vinification room where I let the yeast do it's thing. The fruit was
*very* ripe, around 25° brix or around 24% fructose. This should have given
a final alcohol content of around 13.4%. However, for some reason it didn't
want to ferment completely dry and stopped fermenting at about 4gm/l of
residual sugar, 13.3% alcohol. I put it into cold storage pending bottling.
During all this time nobody except a graduate student doing a 6-month work
experience stint with us even seemed to know about it. I'd asked him a few
thing, given him tastes as it sat in cold storage as I thought it was bloody
great but you know how you can be biased if it's your baby...

It was about this time that the author of The World Atlas of Wine, Hugh
Johnson, came in for a visit, to discuss the state of NZ wines and to tase a
few of our experimental wines. He particularly expressed an interest in
Shiraz. We didn't have many good Shiraz's, we didn't make wine to sell, it
was all for experimental purposes so, as you can imagine, a lot of it was
crap. He seemed a bit disappointed so I slipped away from the tasting room
and came back with a beaker of my wine. I put it on the table and told them
that it's really too cold to taste properly and it should be bottled by now
but I hadn't got a chance to use the corking machine.

Well, I knew that wine was good. For the first time since he'd sat at the
table Mr. Johnson became animated. He even got his notebook out and started
asking me questions. The wine was bloody good, It had that peppery character
which is supposed to be a trait of a good Shiraz but in actual fact is very
rare. He was particularly complimentary about the little bit of residual
sugar, saying it really made the wine, smoothed out the high alcohol content
so it didn't overpower the fruit. He actually said that it was the best
Shiraz that he'd ever tasted! He bemoaned the fact that it wasn't a
commercial wine and there was so little of it and then asked if it would be
possible to have a couple of bottles sent to him in London after it was
bottled. The head winemaker said "No problem". (Huh? I'd made this wine in
my own time, was told I could have the fruit.. I really didn't mind sending
him a few bottles but surely it was my decision?)

You can guess the rest. The next day, at work, in the afternoon I thought it
was about time I asked if I could stay behind after work and use the corking
machine to bottle my Shiraz. I was told that it wasn't mine, that it had
been made on their property, using their equipment, and that they'd take it
from here. Not even a "Thank you very much"

I later learned that the head winemaker bottled it by hand himself, in
half-sized bottles (375ml) and it was stashed away in the part of the cellar
reserved for 'special' wines. The only place that was locked from the
general staff. He wouldn't even give me a couple of bottles, In the end I
got the head of the lab (who also had keys) to 'appropriate' one bottle for
me. He said anymore and there'd be trouble.

I never did see the next issue of The World Atlas of Wine or hear if it was
mentioned. I was very annoyed at the winemaker. I would have been happy for
them to have three quarters of the wine and me have 40-odd half-bottles of
it for myself, leaving them 130. However, to just take it all like that was
very wrong IMO.

Well, that's my little wine story, haven't told it for a while. I can't take
credit for the quality of the wine. The fruit was excellent, extremely ripe
and full of flavour. All I can take credit for is the meticulous selection
if the fruit and not making any mistakes when it came to crushing,
fermenting and pressing it. It would be very hard to make a wine like that
on a commercial scale as the labour involved per bottle was high. Also, the
vines didn't bear a lot of fruit. However, I was told by the head of the lab
that wine like that would sell for around $250 US per bottle minimum. Far
more once word got out, that's why the winemaker had put it in half-bottles.
Apparently it was pulled out at AGMs and the like for the next few years as
the showpiece. "This is what we are acheiving at our facility". I'm told
that my wine was probably responsible for the research centre not being
closed down sooner than it was. The govt. had decided that the private
sector was doing well enough by then with winemaking, the reasearch centre
had served it's purpose, it had kick-started the NZ wine industry.

LOL, yeah, I'm a little bitter that I only got 375ml for myself and that
bottle had to be stolen. And I bloody drank it one night when I was already
drunk, didn't do it justice.

Heh! Looks like I got a bit side-tracked there. Sorry.

LOL, when I read this I had a mouthful of water, it so very nearly ended up
all over the monitor.

Hmm, trip-hop? I rather like Portishead and Tricky and I believe that they
fall into the 'trip-hop' category. However, there's nothing else I like in
that category.

Good luck finding an SoJ. :-)

I dunno, I've played on West for several years and never had one drop for
me. <g>