Left Field - Seasonal Notes

We are all familiar with location-triggered memories: that bridge after Levin where you discussed your sister’s new partner some 30 years ago; everytime you drive that bridge the conversation weirdly lights up in your mind whether or not you care to remember it. Memories and associations imprint not just within the vastness of our minds, they’re also strewn across the landscape, within carparks, locker-rooms and lobbies wherever we may have been! An exterior map of the human mind.

Smells, sounds, words all act as memory Horcruxes or containers; you’ll have yours dotted around and I hope they’re pleasurable and gay.

The vineyard is like this. Across the season, certain memories of experiences attach to the task at hand and the specific place they are performed. Variously, memories are things you’re thinking, what you’re listening to, people who visit and the discussions that take place. Every year this happens. This time I’ve decided to note it.

In 2020, my first year, where everything was new, for whatever reason Toots & the Maytals’, Beautiful Woman and The Stone Roses, Love Spreads were seared into the task of pruning and stripping Row 17. Can’t be in Row 17 now without the urge to fire these songs up on the wireless speaker. (Toots Hibbert passed away in Sept 2020 and for a while there, I felt partially responsible!).

Why should you, or I, care about such things? It can’t be claimed that our 2021 Pinot Noir has hints of Jamaican Reggae or Manchester Alt Rock. Can it? It can be said though, that what follows gives insight into the character of the winegrower if not the wine as it was being tended. And surely there is relevance here?

That said, there are things that even a mother can’t be expected to care about. And this list may well be in that category. What follows are the dominant associations pegged to time and place in the vineyard for the 2024/25 season.

The season is close to it’s end now. So, here’s to a vintage of quality when the memories turn to wine in 60 days or so!

April 2025. Post-harvest. Autumn

The trauma of harvest is over. Grapes are becoming wine. And that is thrilling - winery aromas, emerging wine characteristics ... The vineyard is bedding down in yellow, orange and gold and eventually brown, to winter in peace. The quiet is sudden. And it begs a question which all winegrowers must surely ask at this time of year? Was it worth it and can I muster the strength to do this again?

John Baker, Stalin’s Wine Cellar. Penguin, 2021.

A book. Double Bay wine retailers luck-on to an option to buy the legendary wine collection of Uncle Joe, squirreled away in Georgia. Escaped with no wine but alive and with such a story. You can feel Putin’s Sauronic evil emerging.

Jolie Holland, Escondida, 2004. The Wine Dark Sea, 2014. Various.

Music. That JH is not a household name reflects poorly on us all.

June - Aug 2025. Winter Pruning

Cold days inching methodically down rows cutting, stripping, tying, painting ... Slow passive work until you can work no more. Hands stiffen. Only a hot bath at the end of the day can bring core temps back up. The wood is in, hopefully, the fire is on ...

A.A. Gill, Far and Away: The Essential A.A. Gill, 2020, Orion Publishing Co, narrated by Bill Nighy with foreword written and read by daugher Flora Gill.

An audiobook. No-one writes with such insight and decimating clarity. And read by close friend Bill Nighy! A tonic and a privilege.

Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, 2022, narrated by Bono.

An audiobook. Oldest story in the book. *$!@ parents. Found friends and found a way! The part on the band’s life with NZer the late Greg Carroll ... beautiful.

Alexei Navalny, Patriot, 2024, Penguin, narrated by Matthew Goode.

An audiobook. A hard listen on the gloomy days. The completeness of the suppression and corruption of the human spirit by the Soviet, CIS, and Russian Federation and their goons and Remora, as told by this very decent, likeable and most courageous man…

Sept-Oct 2025. Spring. Bud Break

The light returns. Frosts menace new grow. Digging out undervine weeds by shovel. Prepping wires, posts and gear. Bud rubbing and initial shoot removal. Work days are longer blending into frost watching through the night. Dawn skies are some reward. The game is afoot!

Steven Spurrier, A Life in Wine, 2022, Academie Dy Vin Library Ltd, narrated by Richard Avery.

An audiobook. Unabandoned joy! From another, maybe better, time. The Judgement of Paris guy and so much more. A life well lived in a way that seems beyond history now. Caroline’s Great Aunt Claire remembered airships and swimming in crocodile-infested African rivers. This felt like that time. True adventure. We have crocodiles nearby too!

Elvis Costello, Spike, 1989, Mighty Like a Rose, 1991. Various

Music. I forgot how good Elvis is. Words & music. And the acid and contempt for power and corruption seemed so apt for the moment both within the vineyard and the world beyond. The “bugs are taking over” indeed.

Nov-Dec. 2025. Early Summer. Shoot thinning / Tucking / Wire Lifting / Plucking

The game is on. Decisions and actions compound. Fall behind and you will likely stay behind. Like a newborn home from mat care, the vineyard screams for attention day and night and cannot be ignored. A one unfortunate move ... you’re in big trouble. Late frost. Wind blowing shoots out of wires. Heat stress. Be gentle with winegrowers at this time.

Oz Clarke, Oz Clarke’s Story of Wine: 8000 Years, 100 Bottles, 2023, narrated by Oz Clarke.

An audiobook. It’s Oz Clarke! His reading of Select Committee minutes would enthrall. A break glass and read/listen when feeling exhausted, dispirited and beaten down by the cretins and cretinaciousness. Making wine feels important and necessary, serving a greater purpose, thanks to Oz. I am back in the long chain. Thank you Oz.

Emma Kok, Voilà, written by Barbara Pravi, 2020, performed with André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra, 2023.

Music. Watch the youtube clip and be floored. Do it. Your troubles are nothing. Your aspirations to success are inadequate! This is beauty. Struggle on. Do it! Rows 5-9 Home Fields Pinot Noir vineyard.

Rutger Bregner, BBC Reith Lectures 2025 – Moral Revolution

A podcast. Four lectures that clear-sightedly name and shame the bastards and the horsemen-like decay they’ve wrought. And the plain language response available to all to counter and reclaim our world. Rows 1-6, Chardonnay block.

Jan 2026 - . Mid-late Summer. Canopy Management

Trimming. Weeding (by shovel). Controlling rootstock (by shovel). Plucking and shoot positioning continue. Re-tucking windblown shoots. Netting. Viticulturalists are huskless zombies by this time.

As of today, 2 February, the nets are on and clipped at our places and a neighbour’s vineyard. Three 12 hour days back-to-back. It should mark a pause until harvest but it doesn’t. Repairing holes in nets will be the best part of 3 weeks work. Literally sowing sections of net together by hand, like our fishing ancestor-types did. Cruel.

As of today, 2 February, the nets are on and clipped at our places and a neighbour’s vineyard. Three 12 hour days back-to-back. It should mark a pause until harvest in 6 or so weeks. But it doesn’t. Repairing holes in nets will be the best part of 3 weeks work. Literally sowing sections of net together by hand, like our fishing ancestor-types did. Cruel.

Taking this analogy further, we have discussed key decisions in life, like starting a family or wine brand, as unbusinesscaseable. No accountant or actuary would sign-off on having children. It is, economically, irrational. A total cost sink. Same with vineyards/wine. Perhaps Steven Spurrier, Oz Clarke et al will prove to be Sirens calling us to our ruin. But we would not be without our children. Or our wine life. Such memories. Voilà