How This Thing Came to Be

"Dear Daniel,

It is with great pleasure that I would like to offer you employment with Bird in Hand for the 2013 harvest.  Attached you will find a letter of offer detailing your employment over this period.  You will also find a brief job description indicating the type of work expected in keeping with the offer of employment…

Harvest in the Adelaide Hills usually starts in late February or early March.  As such, our Production Winemaker Peter Ruchs is aiming to have the vintage team arrive between the 18th & 22nd Feb 2013.  Peter will make further contact with you soon to confirm your arrival dates.”

I was somewhat taken aback by this letter I received on January 7th, even though I'd been begging for it for the past three months.  But first, a little background.

I had spent the last few summers, between semesters studying literature at George Mason University, working at a number of the local Loudoun County vineyards.  I'd started out in the summer of 2010 as a naïve and idealistic tasting room lackey at Sunset Hills Vineyard.  However, some romantic notion taking hold, I found myself inexplicably being drawn to the Virginia wine scene, and found my hands getting dirtier and dirtier as I regressed through the system from bartender to bottling line attendant and then sun-baked vineyard worker.

Throwing lugs of fruit for destemming at

Sunset Hills Vineyard.

Finally, immediately after graduation, I decided to waste my college-educated mind by rejecting a conventional and lucrative white-collar job (editing advertisements, of all soul-sucking things), choosing instead the abject poverty and back-breaking labor of life as an assistant winemaker.  Or, less glamorous but probably more accurate: cellar technician.  More derogatory but, again, probably more accurate: cellar rat.   I emerged, other side of harvest, as a hardened cellar rat and completely unemployed.

My boss, Nate Walsh, and another of the vineyard guys I'd worked with, Ben Sedlins, had both worked harvest in the Southern hemisphere during their formative years, had both loved the experiences they'd had abroad and both recommended I try to work a harvest overseas.  I'd hoped to piggyback off of Ben's connection to the winery he'd worked at in Uruguay, and was told I was a shoe-in for the position but, in late October:

"Dear Daniel

Thank you for your interest in doing a harvest with us in Uruguay. This time we have selected a Chilean and a French winemaker.  We will keep in touch if another opportunity appears here in the future.  We wish you good luck in your wine activities and don’t hesitate to contact us if you need something from here.

Best"

A sizable setback for our protagonist, and major blow to his ego.  Of course, completely understandable decision, Chilean and especially French wines are slightly more reputable than their upstart Virginia counterparts.

However, Nate suggested that I keep up the pursuit, focusing on New Zealand, where he'd worked a harvest in Central Ontago.  Direct quote: "You'll have to send out forty applications.  You might hear back from ten.  One of them will be a job offer."  And so, I began pounding pavement, which was actually quite difficult, as I'd been living without internet access for some time, except what I could steal from my local coffeeshop.

However, despite throwing forty applications out into the ether, all I got back were rejections.  

"Unfortunately we have now filled all of our positions at our Marlborough winery, so I regret to advise your application for this position has been unsuccessful."

"Thank you for applying for the position of Vintage Cellar Hand at Possums Winery.  We have received an overwhelming amount of domestic and international applications for the advertised position.  Unfortunately your application was unsuccessful."

"Hi Daniel, thanks for the interest in a harvest position but unfortunately I have filled all the spots I had."

"Thanks for your email regarding work at Felton Road.  We are a small winery and have already secured our vintage help for 2013 therefore we unfortunately have no further positions available."

Etc etc etc, ad nauseam.
Still, I remained undaunted, though perhaps somewhat panicked about the closing window of opportunity for me to secure a position before harvest gets underway.  Having exhausted Nate's list of suggested wineries in the Central Ontago area, I expanded my search, throwing my resumé at any Kiwi winery I could find an email address for.  I figured, "Why not Australia, too?" and started bugging various Aussie producers as well.

Now, another concern rears its ugly head: namely, my unemployment.  My savings from working 60 hours a week during the harvest months had all but depleted themselves under the combined and crushing strain of rent and student loans.  With no prospect of a cellar tech position in the southern Hemisphere, I found myself in desperate need of a job.

In a stroke of luck and a brilliant educational opportunity, I managed to weasel my way into a position at the Ashburn Wine Shop, a reputable little specialty store where my boss, Sergio Mendes, kindly took me under his wing.  Sergio bought me lunch every damn day and exposed me to upwards of a hundred wines a week from every major viticulture area imaginable.  Thus, content to hone my palate and winter over, I got soft while awaiting spring and my reemergence in the vineyard.

So the story goes, until the sudden twist, quoted above.  Now, that unexpected email has forced me to rouse myself prematurely from the paralyzing comfort of my retail position.  So began a blitzed, tortuous logistical race against the clock.  I have until the 22nd of February to be in Adelaide, literally on the other side of the planet.

First, I had to break the news to my bossman.  I felt bad about using him and the shop for a short stint of work to hold me over during the lean winter months, and especially since I knew Sergio was looking to expand to a second location and would therefore be needing experienced staff.  I didn't know how the bossman would take my desertion.

I needn't have worried.  After spending a few days working up the courage to break the news, I manned up and laid it on him.  After listening to me explain the developments, Serg just smiled, shook my hand and gave me his blessing: "That's the dream, brother."

And so, I set about, trying to get a handle on the logistics.  There was the matter of my passport.  Having never been out of the country, I did not possess one.  And, being almost perpetually broke, I had held off applying for one until I absolutely knew for sure that I had a job overseas.  Thus, I shaved my beard and cut my hair, went to the nearest CVS to take the seemingly universally goofy passport photo, and headed to the local Post Office to put in my application.  Expedited, of course.  Time is of the essence.

Well, minor miracle here, despite the expected 2-3 week processing time quoted by the Department of State, mine comes in just nine days.  And so, Step Two: Apply for a visa.  With a minor distaste for legal jargon, this one was disconcerting.  What type of visa did I need?  Seasonal Worker, Skilled Worker, Business, Working Holiday?  Did I need to have a health evaluation, or not?  X-rays for tuberculosis?  HIV test?  Criminal background check?  Did I actually need to have a return ticket booked in order to enter the country?  Would the stipulation that I have $5000 (AUS) in order to enter the country be enforced?

A check for $980.75, raised by my generous friends

to help me on my way.

Well, since I received confirmation today from the Australian Embassy that my visa had been granted, apparently the answer to the first question was "Working Holiday," and the answer to all the other questions was "no."

Now, the sole obstacle remaining in my way is booking my plane ticket.  Thankfully, an impending paycheck, as well as a generous fundraising effort conducted by the one and only Meredith Wilson of Sunset Hills and contributed to by many of my great friends, means I've almost procured the means to purchase said ticket.

Somehow, the logistical nightmare has been pulled off, and I am set to begin a globe trotting adventure that will result in me spending three months in the Adelaide Hills, making wine, of all romanticizable things.  Good Lord.