Wine Life Balance - a Crucible

Growing wine affords an abundance of time for thinking. And thinking about wine is an obsession. And there is much to think and talk about. Best this finds a healthy outlet, hidden in a blog site where it can do no great harm. For anyone stumbling by, we hope it brings some insight or entertainment on the wine life as we're living it

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 down country will never be forgotten. Four of us vacuum-sealed into Caroline’s Volvo, she and I exhausted from the final house clean and the girls still in their school uniforms; part excitement, for they love a family roadie - “let’s play the animal game”; part furious for being dislocated from friends and routines. We stopped halfway to buy everyone gumboots. Redbands, naturally. Taihape, of course.

Neither Caroline and I, wish to be central characters in this story. Wine is our hero. But some understanding of where we stand on wine is essential, so something of us of required. A very little.

Wine has been an abiding part of our lives and our lives together. An Ata Rangi Celebre 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 the point neither has it dictated to us, until we became grower/makers. Ever since, it has taunted, teased and bullied us at its whim and fancy. It steals all our money and has harried us into near constant anxiety/dread. But our use of wine remains by volition. Peripheral albeit central. 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.

So, 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 growing and marketing wine.

Our answer? Simply, we believe in wine as a deeply human cultural inheritance. Wine has always played an uplifting and positive part, in truth an essential part, in social ritual, culture and individual wellbeing. Not exclusively positive, sure, but show me a human achievement without potential for misuse? Cameras on mobile phones are increasingly pushing us over the edge and off cliffs. We are not gods. We err.

In the 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. Growing/making realities. Our moral position has changed too. But it has not waivered. The opposite. The change is brought about from having skin in the game and a lens widened by deep parsing of market realities. We are resolute about wine’s contribution to culture being so much to the good and to all of our betterment than not. But this cultural inheritance, this heritage, is being lost in and overwritten by the current cacophony of panic, moralising and doomsaying. And in the stark commercial realities.

Burning witches instead

You would not agree that there could be any good come of wine if all you did was absorb the cant and motivated reasoning that forms a strangulating narrative around it.

There is a Salem-like witchhunty tone at play here. And indeed there is a powerful puritanical finger pointed at wine by a well-funded global prohibitionist lobbying network called Movendi International. A story we will get to, save to say that lobbying efforts combined with cost of living crises, and stochastic behaviour from Yankee, Alpha, Zebras, - who we have disadvantaged, discombobulated, disenfranchised and enfeebled cruelly and now blame for the death of wine! - all help in trussing wine to the stake.

Behind it all, the Hand of God in all of this, any decent Witchsmeller Pursuivant or Auror will detect older enemies. There since the beginning; preying on weaknesses/features in the working of the human mind, heuristics and biases. The snake in the garden perfecting the exploitation of our inherent flaws. The pusher of the apple’s shine and Dr repelling benefits. Advertising and Marketing. An agent provocateur prosecuting eternal war for our coins, cash, hearts and minds. Advertising and marketing is, of course, itself a creature of human cognitive and socio-cultural construction and shares our evolutionary roots. The Marlborough Man evolved just as surely as the Cro-magnon man did. I will waylay you to explore these themes later.

Wine’s faltering against spirited accusation has also caught the hawkish eye of journalists, influencers, researchers and consultants. Like all weaknesses, many are exploiting the opportunity. A great deal is said about wine’s irrelevance and viability in these febrile times. The woodpile is stacked ever higher. Much of the fuel is pure excreta.

Absolutely, it is beyond doubt that wine is in turbulent waters. What isn’t? Remarkably, much of the chop is generated by the industry and you might even say that the industry has conspired to effectively dunk itself into already troubled depths. Meanwhile, as lobbying has succeeded in gagging and shackling wine and alcohol, advertising and marketing has tottled off to magic up shekels from functional ‘better for you’ beverages, wellness this, and eco that, lifestyle and gorpcore.

These sabotages deserve airing - first you would need to break the omertà that shrouds a coven-like industry; many truths are not confessed publically - vegan wine, organic wine, wine competitions... many players have vested interests in truth-avoiding, spin-inducing bullshittery. Zero sugar wine!

Because Caroline is tired of hearing about it, I am compelled like the Ancient Mariner to switch my glittering eye to you to explore these deeper stories. Wine is at the heart of them. Not only because that’s what Caroline and I do now but because unlike anything I can think of, wine is so centrally a part of our common human story. Wine was even there at, and may be argued to have inspired, the very genesis of our evolutionary journey to influencer marketing, Matcha and Nutricosmetics.

But let’s pause. We’ve only just met. I don’t want you jumping to cracked, conspiracist conclusions. At least, hear me out first.

After the purge … a clearing

For now, as interesting as all that is, we wanted to establish that our adventures in wine began with and have continued to be driven by our mutual fascination with the colourful, curious and entertaining aspects of the wine story as we’re living it and reflecting on it. In all its grainy, sweaty, outrageous, and random magnificence. Peopled with chancers, knaves, cynics, the beaten down, the triumphant few; each as resilient and romantic as the next, despite outward torn shirt and ankle-booted appearances. It’s why we’ve transformed our lives in “burn the ships” fashion to join the story as grower/producers. And the wine is pretty damn fine too.

These deeper, non-marketing motivated stories of wine are incredibly important, often beautiful, uplifting and affirming of our human drama. Life. But they are counter-cultural; they run against the current narratives told about wine in the public squares.

So, as wet weather, sleeplessness or gear failure allows, we’ll write our counter cultural palimpsest on the beauty and richness and hardship and horror of wine as part of our human wine story, as we live it.

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

Brent, Feb 2026