We're live!

I start writing this blog as I am on a study leave from my adopted home New Zealand. I am researcher and lecturer at Lincoln University near Christchurch, but am here in St Catharines Ontario for about six months in total, working with Andy Reynolds of Brock University's Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute.

St Catharines is less than a half-hour from Niagara Falls, and thus is near to my hometown of Ithaca New York, so I know what the climate is like, at least: hot and humid in the summer, bitterly cold and dry in the winter!

I am a grapevine physiologist by training, at Cornell University and Oregon State University, and viticulture is one of my main interests, both academically and personally! I hope, with this blog, to keep a bit of a record of my travels while on this study leave, jot down notes about viticulture, wines, ideas, life and more (I think that about covers it!).