After cleaning the equipment on Monday, we received nine tons of sauvignon blanc on Tuesday. It was painful to be at work at 6:30am mostly because after the first small batch of grapes we processed, we waited 45 minutes for the next load to come in, meaning we didn't really have to be there yet. But I'll complain more the first time we're told to show up at 4am. We had finished receiving grapes by 9:30am, but it took us until 3pm to move the juice into the tank and clean everything because the separator is a difficult piece of equipment to use. It extracts only the free run juice, so they could use a press for the same purpose. Everything seemed to be done inefficiently, but that's probably because labor is ridiculously cheap compared to new equipment.
The past two days, we took samples from the vineyards, cleaned the 40-year-old screw press (one of only five left in South Africa, one other is sitting next to it but broken), painted wax on open-top cement fermenters, and hand labeled 45 cases of wine. Reading about the protests in Egypt has been interesting because I went to Tahrir Square where the Egyptian museum is and I remember some of the landmarks mentioned in the news articles. I am very glad to be out of there.
On Monday everybody at the winery laughed at the incident of the man attacking his wife. The man was even back at work the next morning as if nothing had happened. They say it is common and normal. I've heard that there is freedom in this country, but I think it is more like lawlessness.
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