Goodbye Australia, Hello Germany!

So here's a fun fact...I'm moving to Germany! I'm working this upcoming in the Pfalz...I'm going to learn to make one of my favorite varietals...Riesling! And I'll be working for Koehler-Ruprecht. A lovely small winery that Market Restaurant 
used to carry on there wine list.

All my accommodations and meals are sorted and it sounds like an amazing learning experience but my future employer can explain it better than me. Below is his email: 

"We are a boutique winery with the size of 10,5 ha and a total production of maximum 80 tons, depending on the vintage. At Penfolds they probably do that in 2-4 hours, what we do in 6-8 weeks ;-)

Since the ownership changed three years ago, we are a fairly young and new team of a cellarmaster, a vineyard manager (who is not here in harvest), myself and a large group of Polish helpers plus Mr. Philippi, the old owner and now consultant. He is making wine all over the world.
To be honest with you, you would be the only intern. Reason: small winery and pretty efficient way of processing the grapes.

A regular harvest day is about 8-12 hours long, Sunday only about 6-8 hours. All depending on the weather and the picking decisions.
You would be with us on the crushpad, cleaning the press, crushing the grapes, draining the tanks into the barrels, fermentation control etc. Regular winery work, but not comparable to the new world wineries. It's a different world here.
Also, we would probably need you from time to time in the vineyards to pick the grapes. Here is our main focus on the quality. we go thru some vineyards up to five times and do different cluster selection, which we all proccess in different bins and barrels. Not that we wanna give you the "boring" job of picking, here is where you can learn our philosophy of the different Prädikat levels and wine qualities. 
The work here would be a fair mix of both, probably a bit more cellarwork, but at this stage all hard to tell, since decisions are usually made from day to day."


Doesn't sound boring to me at all. Call me crazy but I can't wait!


Oh and my future boss, Dominik Sona, owns his own small winery called Weingut Sona just 30 minutes away. So I will be able to help him with his vintage when I have time. Basically, I'll be busy :) Wish me luck!