So I Found a Mine….

And fortunately I didn’t have a flashlight. I discovered it after following a track up the left-hand side of the Kawarua Gorge, one I had seen from the road. I had to ask permission from the owner of Olssens Wines to use it, and it takes you alongside the river before up to a higher plateau and above the old gold mining settlement, now a museum and home to the Goldrush jetboat. I say I was fortunate not to have a flashlight because I have a fondness for holes and if I had I may have ventured further in. The minute I stepped into it years of extensive training kicked in (watching horror movies with best friend C and Housemate A) and I got the fear. It was one of those moments where in the film you’re screaming at the girl not to go into the sinister building, except I’m not a girl and it was a sinister mine not building. Common sense prevailed, mainly because I almost tripped over about ten metres in, otherwise I may have been lost, fallen down some shaft, perhaps hunted by some unknown predator of the depths. They would have found faithful Ol’ Blue, still waiting for me at the entrance after several years and would have said ‘oh that’s what happened to that English cyclist that disappeared’ and they would have finally been able to close that missing persons file. But maybe I would have survived, discovering a lake down there full of blind fish to eat. Over the years I may have changed, skin becoming palid, eyes enlarging and growing pale, lamp-like, to compensate for the blackness down there, fingers elongating  to better grasp the fish in my cold lake, and perhaps to strangle some stray goblin that ventured too far from safer tunnels. I may mutter to myself, in a whispering, gutteral way, and repeatedly clear my throat. Who knows, I may have even found a ring.

                  But I didn’t, I emerged safe and well, but I would love to go back there with some chums and some flashlights but I’m yet to convince anyone in the pub. I did manage to kick a bit of ventilation tubing rather loudly as I left, which reverberated menacingly behind me. As I ate my lunch outside I kept glancing rather nervously at the entrance, just in case a Balrog came out looking for a BBQ. Anyway enough of my flights of fancy, back to picking (no groaning at the back please), which continues apace.So apace that I am almost done at Felton. Wednesday will see the traditional early finish after the picking of Block 1 Riesling (always the last to go) before another lunch cooked by Nigel (the owner) before the rest of the day spent in the pub. I will endeavour to pace myself. Talking of lunch from Nigel, he’s down 3 or 4 so far. Add to that the BBQ cooked by Owen Calvert on the last day of picking at Calverts, factor in the fresh coffee and food we get at smokos prepared by Gareth’s wife Karen and the frequent glasses of wine sometimes at lunch or at the end of the day, times the keg of organic beer (Emmersons) tapped by Nigel after picking on Saturday and x equals one very spoilt bunch of pickers. I said as much to Andrea just as we tucked into lunch on Saturday, which is ironic because I got tapped on the shoulder by Mervyn afterwards and was told I would be leading the note of thanks to Nigel. I’m not given to public speaking but any nerves vanished when I thought of the people I was about to address: friends every one, even given the short time I had been with them. I can remember exactly my words, but I thanked him for the food and everyone else for the welcome, and said how spoilt we were and what a special place it was to be.

                 Nigel turned round and thanked us back immediately. He cited how Blair, the winemaker at Felton, had been to see a modern sorting table the day before but wouldn’t be buying one. Then he used a joke to illustrate his point: two men using a urinal, one finishes and washes his hands the other finishes and does not. The first reproachfully tells the other, ‘in my country we are taught to wash our hands’. The second one replies ‘well in my country we are taught not to piss on them in the first place’. Basically they don’t need a sorting table in the winerybecause we the pickers don’t pick crap. And unlike a lot of vineyards that are on the phone to contractors screaming at them for a picking team while the fruit turns, or rots, or is eaten by birds, Felton Road has a crew of dedicated pickers, some of whom are here all year, some who come back every year and some, like me, make a pilgrimage to one of the finest wine estates in New Zealand. Felton Road’s position gives it the enviable luxury of being able to pick and choose….it’s pickers. It all works out rather neatly: Gareth runs the vineyards aided by his managers Nick, Sam and Sarah. One or two of them will pick with us, making sure the rows are getting picked evenly. Alongside them are the interns, full-time members of the staff often from vineyards abroad, like the Frenchies Manu and Marian from Muscadet, the mad Swiss Fabian and ze Germans Johanis x 2 and Stefan. There’s also Andrew the Californian ex-sommelier who is studying viticulture and his Chilean girlfriend Flor, who is a vet. In another time he would have been a warrior-poet and we have a good time discussing the more ethereal side of wine. It is generally a mix of these that run the bikes, quads with small trailers that go up and down the rows, dropping off empty buckets in front of us and picking up the full ones behind. One person drives and the other picks up, and they swap jobs regularly during a session. The buckets are taken to the bins, big blue things that hold about a ton of grapes. On top are metal trays the grapes are poured into where Mervyn or Gareth with check through them. If there is too much botrytis, bird peck or second set (a later fruiting, not fully ripe) the message gets relayed by walkie-talkie to the manager leading the picking crew and we get shouted at (but not very loudly). We are an eclectic lot: there’s Stuart Elms and his sister Audrey. Stuart planted Elms, putting the first vines in in 1992 and producing its first vintage, and the vineyard is named for him. He picked the spot after studying maps of the soil and ‘degree days’, an average of the temperature during the growing season once it gets above 10, below which the vine won’t be up to much. To have picked this place, possibly the best vineyard in the area, is a real coup and I hope he is very proud. There’s Martin, the Swedish sommelier with a Monty Python obsession, Andre,  ‘ze German’ who loves beer more than anyone in my memory, Andrea, the American girl with a ready laugh and no volume control, and Ann, the eccentric German/Brit who I tease mercilessly. She asked Andrew, Nigel’s nephew who is a drum and bass DJ, what instrument he plays. When he told her he plays other people’s music but does make some himself, she asked ‘but how do you make music without an instrument?’. Love it.

                   And Bruce the other Brit, who is possibly one of the most generous and genuine people I have come across. He shuttles me to the supermarket when I’m too cream crackered to cycle to Cromwell and has lent me two books, a history of New Zealand and one of the English Language. This way I manage to stay intelligent. Incredible but true. There’s also Nikki, who offers me lifts I can’t take when I’m freezing my arse off riding to work, because I wouldn’t be able to get the bike into the car. She also shows concern when I schnip myself, which has happened three times, two of them real bleeders, which require a lot of sucking and usually about 5 plasters. Think I’ll be left which some scars to remember this time by. And what a time. Most of the day picking is spent laughing, with the occaisional outbreak of grape wars which the Germans always start. They insist their innocence but we simply cite Poland.