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Wine and Cricket in Otago
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Otago Polytechnic's Cromwell campus turned out ‘en masse’ to help their fellow Viticulture students harvest white wine grapes on the Polytech’s vineyard block. A post-harvest barbecue and an ‘India versus New Zealand’ cricket match were held after the first day of harvesting to celebrate.
(via Otago Polytechnic) Raewyn Paviour, Otago Polytech’s viticulture lecturer, said students had been nurturing the vines for the past year.
“Hands-on learning is an ideal way for students to learn and it was exciting for them to see it all come to fruition,”she says.
She believes that while summer wasn’t as warm or predictable as usual, 2008 will produce a "very good" vintage.
“The quality and condition of our fruit is superb this year. It won’t be a bumper year like last year though. That one was really one out of the bag – the New Zealand market was bulging at the seams. This year we’ll be producing about 110 cases of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris which equates to 1,400 bottles.”
Ms Paviour says the celebration barbecue and cricket match were a great way for the students to let off some steam after working hard in the lead-up to harvest time.
The cricket match was brainchild of a group of Indian international students here on a pilot horticulture training scheme developed by Otago Polytech, Immigration NZ and the New Zealand Horticulture Industry Training Organisation.
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