The Family We Become

May 19, 2007

Long hours and hard labor, the stinging smells of sulphur while trying to breath an air permeated by carbon dioxide, and these are the best days of the years. You can be so lucky to love your job but at the end of the day it is the company of your peers that makes it the best six weeks during the hardest time. While the northern hemisphere slips out of winter garb and readies for summer winemaking interns converge on New Zealand from every grape growing region in the world. We struggle through language barriers and life miles from home to form a connection, a bond that will stretch the miles and test the changes in our lives.

Long nights spent processing the tons of grapes fresh in from the vineyards stretch out with after hour’s beers. Sleep depraved and hungry from a lack of frequent feedings we push on again the next morning. There is no time to notice the exhaustion—we are working too hard and having too much fun.

There are no days off so we make the most of our free time. Friday nights find the whole of the Nelson vintage crew at Ruby’s Bar. Walled in by glass, carpeted with broken shells and furnished with leather sofas, towering trees and flowering vines—a tree house on the ground. Old country music blares from the speakers and local micro brews flow from the tap, it is one of the few bars showing more micros than commercial beers.

Farther on down the Appleby highway and into Golden Bay the Mussel Inn makes their famous brews, one in particular caught my eye one night after a long walk from the Shambala backpacker’s accommodation. Travelers and locals alike cozy up on long tables, listening to live music and sustaining themselves with handles of fresh brewed beer and platters of seafood. Beers are their specialty and though you can’t take it home I can find my favorite, Captain Cooker Manuka Ale, at a select few bars around the region. Ruby’s serves it up and I drink it down.

Foreigners are easy to spot from the color of the beer they drink. Kiwis stick to lagers and blondes with an amber hard to be spotted. Pale ales and stouts are more slowly bought up but quickly consumed by travelers and interns. Ruby’s tabletops resemble calico cats as people of all nations and states mingle and drink, whittling away the hours before a big day and an early morning.

Depending on the size of the winery interns live in an assortment of accommodations. I have seen converted sheds with long drop toilets, pool houses and home-made group accommodation complete with Internet and big screen televisions. We live above bars and in backpackers’ accommodations. I made my home near the beach at the aptly named Beach Hostel, sharing a living room with Germans, all speaking a different dialect and having an equally hard time understanding one another. Though not on the vintage circuit I drug them with me to party after party and before long they were often found on the porch at Seifried’s intern compound than the interns themselves.

Seifried’s was the local for many barbecues and pre-parties, in the morning we would return to pick up our cars and lie about on the sunny stoops drinking prosecco and staving off the inevitable headaches. Germans, Italians, South Africans and Canadians. Californians, French, Maori and Kiwi. We ate and drank under the great expanse of southern hemisphere stars. The Southern Cross pointed down on us as the world spun moving the galaxies about our heads. On the right night the tail of the big dipper would peak up over the edge of the horizon giving me a taste of home, but on these nights I was never homesick. We lived and loved our life and drank in the moments.

Numbering over twenty we would pile into taxis and take the fifty-dollar ride to town, but fifty twenty ways is mere pennies and these were our only excursion out into the Nelson nightlife. For a small town the city of Nelson gets going on weekend nights. We danced to the popular sounds of the states; all entwined in the music of the moment and the beats of our bodies hitting the floor.

They were moments of pure bliss when we were carefree and flying high on living in the moment the most we could. This is a feeling that cannot be bottled or duplicated back home; we are on our own but safe in the family that we created and will forever love.