Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Check this link out!

Here is an interesting story I stumbled across on the web. I must say not a bad photo either! http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/2008/09/meet-matthew-munzberg-barossa-grower-on.html

Friday, September 12, 2008

Post from South Africa

Well I am on my way home now. I have been in South Africa for nearly a week, most of that time near Cape Town. I will get back home on the weekend, after spending nearly 17 weeks travelling the world. In that time I have flown around the world twice, done around 30 individual flights and covered nearly 65,000 air miles. I have stayed in around 50 different hotels. I have been to 12 different countries and driven vehicles in 8 of them. In the 10 weeks of my own study I have conducted more than 25 pre arranged interviews, with at least that many more informal meetings. I have also completely missed out on a southern hemisphere winter. The knowledge I have gained on my travels, I believe, will take a long time for me to digest properly and put to use in our business. I would like to say a great big thank you to Nuffield and Nufarm for organizing and funding my scholarship. I would also like to thank all the people I have interviewed and met with, I have been blown away with how generous people have been with their time. Thanks also to the many people who have provided me with contacts to enable me to conduct my study, in some cases they even provided me with a bed as well as answering any questions I had. This experience has been life changing for me and, I believe, will influence just about everything I do in the future.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

A Post from London

This week I am in the UK. I have spent some time near Cambridge and I am now in London. I am staying at the Farmers club right in the heart of London just across the Thames from the London Eye. I flew in from France last Thursday. I really enjoyed my time in Eastern France and learnt lots about how wine is made in the 'old world', and some of the mystic that is attached to it. The photo is another that I took while I was in France, in the Alsace region.
Back at home in the Barossa Valley it has been a relatively dry week, with only 2.8mm of rain recorded. We have also had 3 frosts (2 of them quite a low -1.4C). I hope these have not done any damage, I have been told that some of our vines were at woolly bud stage and so will be vulnerable to frost from now on.