Wine Life Balance - a Crucible

Our Wine Tūrangawaewae - Something Worth Burning Your Ships For

It is no casual thing relocating a small family from a comfortable city life to live in the countryside and to make wine. The day of travel from Sandringham down country to Wairarapa will never be forgotten. Four of us vacuum-sealed into Caroline’s Volvo, she and I exhausted from the final house pack and clean and the girls still in school uniform; part excitement, they love a roadie - “let’s play the animal game”; part furious at being dislocated from friends and routines. After overnighting in Taupo, we stopped halfway to buy everyone gumboots. Redbands, naturally. Taihape, of course.

With corporate clothes actually vacuum sealed away in deep storage, our new wine life in the country began post-harvest 2020. Numerous practical considerations aside, we faced a moral question on making and selling wine.

Wine has been an abiding part of our lives and our lives together; an Ata Rangi Celebre at Matterhorn on our first date. A Kumeu River at our first house. Dalliances with South Australians like Saltram and Chapel Hill. We have been in the thrall of wine but not its grip, mercifully. Wine has never been a compulsion It has not dictated to us. Until we became grower/makers. Ever since, wine has taunted, teased and bullied at its whim and fancy. Wine steals all our money and has harried us into near constant fug of anxiety/dread. But our use of wine remains by volition. Peripheral. Complementary. An accoutrement adorning a Paradise Indian on the couch together watching Endeavour on a Tuesday night in winter with the fire crackling. Wine fits into and enriches our lives. Best supporting actor every year since 2004.

Simply, we like wine. A lot. In a glass and beyond. In a boat, with a goat etc. We are also unnaturally attracted to wine stories, both modern and ancient; the cultural inheritance of wine throughout human history, its shaping influence. Wine has always played an uplifting and positive part, in truth an essential part, in our social ritual, culture and in individual wellbeing. Not exclusively positive, sure, but show me a human artefact without potential for misuse? E scooters. Phone cameras. Cars. Canned whipped cream. They all claim lives because, well to be human is to err.

In our wine growing/making years since 2020, our posture towards wine has changed in ways you would expect; romanticised ideals have been overwritten with hard won experience. Our moral position has changed too. But it has not waivered. The opposite. Having skin in the game has widened to full exposure the lens on market realities and the culture of the community with have joined.

Hysteria

We are resolute about wine’s contribution to culture being so much to the good and to our general betterment than not. Wine’s cultural inheritance, its heritage, and dare I say its potential individual health benefits, is diminished in the current cacophony of moralising and doomsaying as global wine sales go from early COVID raging and ready to the current shame-inducing flaccidity. There is a Salem-like witchhunty tone as, around the world, wine is on trial with a great deal said about its relevance and viability; by biohacking influencers, nutraceuticals pedlars and their GLP weapons of mass reduction. Anti-alcohol lobbyists point puritanical fingers at wine and captured regulators and neoprohibitionists cry ‘witch’. It’s a rich seam for wine writers trading in ambulance chasing or for consultants and marketers offering dysfunction beating salvation.

All this combined with a world in crisis where, nevertheless, words such as recession or genocide dare not speak their names. And the ever-stochastic behaviour of youth is cynically exploited to structurally disadvantage, discombobulate, disenfranchise and enfeebled them. And we have the temerity to blame young folk for the death of wine! This all helps truss wine to the stake.

The woodpile is stacked ever higher with fuel, much of which is pure excreta. What a time to enter the wine world!

Burn the Witch!

Neither of us are creatures of trend or fashion. Too slow. Uninteresting slow water, read books, watch BBC drama types. Hardly creatures to trade on personality or ride any frothy crest, especially as our birth years start with a 1! As such we felt an attraction to what we imagined a wine and country life would entail – slower. Non-performative. A direct line between effort, endeavour and reward. Tangible and consequential. A measure of character and stewardship rather than bluster. In essential ways we were right. Great wine cannot be produced without stewardship and endeavour. The reward signals in the producer community and wider trade are still skew whiff though. Performative and popular are currency here just as they were in corporate.

We also knew there would be learning. And stories. This part we underestimated. Seven years and 6 vintages in, our mutual fascination with the colourful, curious and surprising aspects of the wine story as we’re living it and reflecting on it, are backing up like so much water trying to get through a neighbour’s undersized culvert. Another story.

Our wine life is cartoonishly drawn in grainy, sweaty, outrageous, and random magnificence. The characters run the spectrum, overwhelmingly genuine and generous. The community is no pencil sketch caricature. There are colourful types aplenty including the sly, bullshitters, cynics, the beaten up and the broken down, and a triumphant few. Each player has a bolt of resilience and romantic passion running through them. Don’t let the ruddy-face, raggedy torn shirts and ankle-booted appearances and taciturn conversation take you in. Passion, practical artistry, devotional care drives wine people, whether in the vineyard or winery. Not all, of course. But we’ve found character and passion for craft here in abundance.

Upon reflection, over years now not some second glass lift off, seeking something to be passionate about that tested our character was what we sought. For ourselves and as an example for our girls. It’s why we’ve transformed our lives in “burn the ships” fashion to join the story as grower/producers.

Stories We Tell Ourselves

We would make it work.

Starting anything from scratch guarantees a novel perspective, informed by ignorance and curiosity. We knew we were in for a ride. New stories, our own and other peoples would result. And so they do. The story sheet is as much the harvest as the grapes are. The wine stories we’re living and being drawn into are richer and deeper than the usual stories of wine motivated by marketing – are there many of us who have eaten a violet?

Fuller truths of wine growing, making, marketing and selling – the industry – generally don’t make it to the customer. And fair enough too. As you’re enjoying a decompressing Pinot Noir at home or in a gathering of Chardonnistas, conversation is unlikely to turn naturally to the winegrower standing thigh deep in a freezing cold stream at 3am clearing an intake pipe during early spring frost event.

These are precisely the experiences and stories we’re most surprised and enthralled by. They add dimension and further interest and character to the wine, making it realer and therefore even more precious. The transformation of a labour-sapping agricultural product into a sophisticated piece of finery… magic. Every bit as reverential as a party trick played at a wedding in Cana many are still banging on about several years later.

I can’t help thinking of an impression left on me at first seeing the Lord of the Rings movie, the Fellowship of the Ring, at the Embassy in Wellington. Yes, the scenery, the characters and dialogue. But the dirt on Ian McKellen’s nose was distractingly compelling. Apart from the preening elves, the LoTR players’ clothes were grubby, their pores pocked black with grime. It was a depth orf authenticity beyond the wodge of stage makeup smeared across J Rambo’s dial. Gandalf’s nose etc rendered an unpretentious reality appropriate to the spectacle.

Hope is Not a Strategy

I have always bristled at that aphorism. There are few guarantees on offer for anything in this world. Particularly anything new or outside the lane. Hope is the fairy dust of entrepreneurs, lovers, battlers, dreamers and me! All of us, under its spell.

So, we’re growing and making wine. Hurrah! It is every bit as exciting to us seven years on as it was in our first season. We’re also collecting a barrel hall of wine stories. So as wet weather, sleeplessness or gear failure affords, we’ll find ways to write and share something of these stories. Often, they’ll be counter cultural; if the current wine zeitgeist is doom and extinction, we don’t feel it. Well, our balance sheet does. But our fascination with the wine story we live and we learn are incredibly important, we think. Often beautiful. Uplifting. Redolent with subtle notes of beauty ensconced by rich seams of endeavour and horror. Affirming of our human drama. Life. Wine life balance.

Our goal here is to keep the wine torch burning in gloomy times; to help see through the murk and affirm that we are on the side of the witch.

Brent, Feb 2026

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