Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

We are well into spring here in Matakana Valley. Thus we just completed a spring cleaning of our wine storage shed and decided that we had four wine barrels that we will not use again. We buy new French oak barrels for our best wine and one year old used French Oak for our second tier wine. After using a second hand barrel three years it is time to retire it as all of our wine is now too good to use older barrels. So,,,, we came up with four "end of life" barrels this week.

What does one do with old barrels? There are many choices but the most common is to cut them in half with a chainsaw and use them as planters. That is what the boss-Sandra- decided was the best executive decision for our four used up barrels. In the shot above you can see me standing by our vineyard truck with one of the freshly bisected barrels still wine stained on the inside. I can now tell you that it takes a lot of dirt to fill a half wine barrel!! Each barrel holds 225 liters of wine which would be 300 bottles of wine--a lot of dirt.

So, we have placed the two new planters by our garden at our home and put rock mellon and watermellon seeds in them. By the end of summer we should have some yummy fruit to sample with friends by our outdoor fireplace along with a nice bottle of wine.

The second shot in todays blog??? Oh, that is me hard at work shoveling garden mix from the back of our ute. (a ute is Kiwi talk for a small pickup truck -called a utility vehicle or ute for short) I am shoveling the mix over the garden fence into the planting beds where the boss is planning to get the vegi garden going soon. Rural NZ has very nice garden centers and good growing soil for sale by the cubic meter which fills up the back of a normal ute pretty well. You can get a truck load for 60 bucks which is a lot of dirt for one's dollar for sure. "Cheap as dirt" is sure true here in Matakana Valley this spring time.

More soon on grapes and bottling but I digressed this time on the blog.

Dr Jim downunder digging in the dirt!!!