It was this week last year that I got on the plane and started my year away in the Southern hemisphere.

One year on and back in the Northern hemisphere!

I can hardly believe I’ve been back over a week now, what with meeting up with friends and spending time with my family, I have hardly had a chance to reflect on the mountain of experiences I have had, the people I have met – and of course the wines I have consumed! I do at least have this blog to look back upon, with some parts of the trip better documented than others as my attentions were diverted elsewhere from time to time… So I intend to spend a few weeks now looking back over the written record of my year away, fill in the gaps, and if I get time, re-jig the layout of the site a bit.

I am back in the UK for only a month, before I get back on a plane and head West this time! Having just circled the globe in an easterly direction, it only makes sense to go back and do it again going the other way!

My new Westerly route around the world

After meeting John in Mendoza, and chatting to him and Stephanie, I decided to squeeze in another vintage this year in the USA. So on September the 1^st I am headed for the California to stay with a friend of Johns, David Mahaffey at his Heron Lake vineyard, home of ‘The Olivia Brion’ – to learn how things are done in the Napa, and to learn more about Californian wine.

The UK market seems to get only a limited amount of wine from the US that isn’t either cheap (in both senses of the word) or exceedingly expensive, almost all of the good, reasonably priced stuff is sold in the home market – which is fair enough I guess. But it means that my knowledge of this major global producer is quite limited, something I will try and put right during September and October when I stay with David.

After the grapes are all in, and I have spent a bit of time travelling around the wineries of Northern California, I will be continuing West, losing an entire day to the international date line this way round, and arriving just in time for my girlfriend Amber’s birthday at the start of November. Back in Masterton, I will seek work somewhere in the locale, hopefully keeping an eye on the wine until the end of January, when we’ll return here via and long weekend with wine enthusiast and fellow ex-oddbinser Gareth in Hong Kong where he now teaches English.