Every year Elk Cove welcomes 4-6 Harvest Interns, mostly students of winemaking. Some come from Europe or the Southern Hemisphere to experience an Oregon vintage, others come from just down the road. An essential part of our winemaking team, our interns work long hours during the surge in activity that Harvest brings. We’d like to share a little bit of their stories here:

An interview with 2015 Harvest Intern, Martin:

Where are you from?

South Tyrol.

How did you get here?

I studied winemaking in Geisenheim, Germany. Then I worked seven years at a big winery in South Tyrol, Erste + Neue which means First and New Winery.

Everybody else was going to classic wineries in New Zealand, Australia or California so I decided to go to Oregon to be different. Also you make Riesling and I love Riesling. It’s the best white wine.

What’s something you’d like people to know about you?

I liked Claire’s meatballs very much.

(this was about day 2 of harvest so she set a high standard for harvest lunch)

What’s your favorite harvest task & why?

Punch downs and pump overs. Here with the big open fermenters it’s very easy. In South Tyrol we only had a small opening in the fermenters so it was very difficult to get the hose in. And the punch downs were automated so it’s more fun here.

(Johnny and I laugh probably because punch downs, while fun, are a lot of hard work)

What’s one of your hidden talents?

I play soccer but I broke my two knees.  I don’t play on a team, only in my free time. Also I mountain bike.

I went to my first American football game on Saturday, it was amazing, the whole stadium sang the national song.