So that’s the 2009 vintage done

At Felton anyway. A few other vineyards are still wrapping it up nearby and there is still fruit up towards Queenstown at Gibbston but generally most of it is in the bag, or should I say the fermenters. We ended ours by a swift picking of the remainder of Block 2 before the traditional final schnipping of Block 1 Riesling, which will make it’s own wine (a sweeter, ‘auslese’ style of riesling with over 50 grams of residual sugar). The final bunch cut was greeted with a huge cheer and there was much punching of air and shaking of hands. I was of course a Johnny-come-lately, but for a lot of them this represented the culmination of all their efforts over the year, and the years preceding them, indeed all the way back to 1992 and those first vines Stuart planted in Block 2. Felton Road is based on the American, oops sorry Andrea, Muuuuuuur-cun model of government with three branches of power: Nigel (owner) is the executive, Gareth (viticulturalist) is the legislative and Blair (winemaker) the judiciary. However unlike Muuur-caaaar they actually get on. And agree with each other. In fact I think it is their combined and very clear vision that drives the winery forward and has forged it, as Tod (assistant wine-maker) put it, with only the merest whiff of hubris, into the icon of Central Otago.

                 No vain boast however. Yes they have great vineyard sites in Elms and Cornish Point, as well as the leased Calvert’s, but it is their dedicated vineyard management and talent in the winery, augered by Nigel’s strong commitment to environmental issues that creates a model of sustainable viticulture that must be the envy of many, not least because it produces such amazing wine. I agreed with Tod and used this example for why: the netting. All the vines in Otago are netted. I believe I may have mentioned Waxeyes before, but other birds like the grapes as well. I asked Manu whether his Melon de Bourgogne vines in Muscadet are similarly netted. He laughed and said ‘non, because the grapes are not sweet enough!’. However here in Otago they make for a tasty treat, so they must net. There are 3 types of netting, one where entire blocks of vines are covered, another where the net lies over entire canopy and fruit and is clipped underneath and thirdly side-netting, where two net strips are run along the rows and clipped above and below the fruit. Felton Road favours the latter but that comes at a price. Firstly clipping the nets out and then unclipping them is the most labourious of the three. Then you have to run them. Of all the jobs during harvest, ‘running’ is probably the toughest, and reserved for the young Turks like Fabian and Andrew, as well as marathon runner Bruce. It involves teams of three, one driving the tractor while the other two run ahead and hold the unclipped nets out so they can be neatly wound back onto a large spindle at the front of the machine. On the long rows in the bigger blocks this is hard going, with a uneven surface to run on and the frequent slopes you have to contend with. Nets going over the canopy merely require a tractor with a raised spindle to reel them in. I’ve yet to see them taking in the nets over entire blocks but it is probably simpler still. So why all the hardship and expense? Because the bigger the net, the greater the impact on the microclimate, and the more intrusive you are on the developement of the grape and it’s interaction with the environment around it. Ann visited a vineyard in Otago, further up towards Gibbston and it was under a full net and she was amazed just how sterile it was, and little life was under there, both plant life between the rows and insect life.

                  But the vines we picked teamed with life. That was bought home everytime you knelt on a thistle or got a pinch from an earwig when you schnipped into a bunch to clear out the rot. Spiders and wasps are everywhere, and the birds that love the berries almost as much as we do. This is a central tenet of the biodynamic approach to viticulture, which is like organic farming but on acid, or if it was being done in Middle-Earth. Actually I believe a lot of the principles in biodynamics come from passages in ‘The Silmarillion’. It is in fact of Vanyar origin, the fairest and most noble of the High Elves living in Aman, which men call ‘The Undying Lands’. Just in case you were wondering.

                 All of which should demonstrate I’m not the person to talk to about biodynamics, at least not yet. That isn’t going to stop me trying however. I never let facts get in the way of a good story. The clue is in the word: ‘bio-dynamism’. Instead of chucking toxins at a plant to ensure good health, biodynamics is a sympathetic approach that adds compounds that auger the vine’s weaknesses and and energises (makes dynamic) it’s strengths. It’s the making of these compounds that gives biodynamics its rather quirky reputation. There are nine in total, numbered 500 to 508. I won’t bore by listing them but the most common are the first two, 500 and 501. 500 is cow manure which is stuffed into a cow’s horn and then buried into rich soil during autumn, before being retrieved in Spring. 501 is powdered quartz again placed ina  cow’s horn and buried from spring to the following autumn. Both are added in very small, homeopathic-espue amounts to water and then sprayed onto the vines. You were warned.

                   And I was starting you off easy. It’s gets stranger; 505 for example is oak bark chopped into small pieces, placed in the skull of a domestic animal, surrounded by peat and buried where plenty of rain water runs past. I shit you not. Other preparations involve various parts from various animals, like a cow’s small intestines, its peritoneum and the bladder of a red deer. The reason for the nature of the containers is fairly murky, but it’s claimed that there is a natural synergy between container and compound, and the properties of one energise the other. For example oak bark is 79% calcium, and the bone in the skull is calcium. 503 is calmomile with the cow’s intestines again: camomile is known to have properties beneficial to the digestion, and according the biodynamic wine-maker Nicolas Joly, the cow has achieved the ‘greatest development of its digestive system’. The period the camomile is buried within the cow’s small intestine ‘enhances and reinforces’ the desirable properties of the herb. Thus the 503 preperation will stimulate microbiotic life within the soil and stabilise the nitrogen content of the compost it is added to. Much of the focus of biodynamics is toward soil health, the opposite of the effect of herbicides and insecticides, which leave the soil devoid of life and nutrients after a period of time. Ironically this is good for the companies that sell these toxins, because the destruction of soil health means viticulturalists need artificial growth agents in massive quantities. Neat.

                   There is more: biodynamic procedures follow an astrological derived rythmn throughout the season, particularly dictated by the phases of the moon. I hoping many of you aren’t switching off in droves, because this strikes a deep resonance with me. When I first started reading about it, it reminded me strongly of things learnt studying anthropology; of tribes intimately knowledgeable of the plant and animal life around them, conceptualising this as energy and colour and shapes, with themselves every much embedded within all of them. A complete, holistic view of the world around them, and one more detailed than science can provide. And this is what biodynamics reaches back to: a more ancient, pre-scientific knowledge of the world around us and no less valid than the one mostly employed today. Growers back then lived and died by the product of their harvest and the rythmn of life was dictated by the whims of nature. Referencing anthropology once more, man moved from a hunter-gatherer based society to an agrarian one pretty much as one all over the world, despite these societies being so diverse and having no contact with each other (although pockets of hunter-gatherer remained and still remain to this day). Monolithic and other large stone structures came along soon after, and their purpose was remarkable similar and more so, incredibly accurate: charting the movements of the heavens. British ones like Stonehenge and the Avebury complex (not just the stone circle) should be familar, but others like the various pyramids that dot the globe, like the Mayan, Egyptian and the Cambodian Koh Ker complex, seem to share the same purpose (although obviously there is still debate and opinion is divided). It has been argued that Stonehenge is a computer designed to predict eclipses. As you can see I love all this crap, so biodynamics is immediately appealing. Less appealing to the wannabe vegetarian in me is the animal parts used in the preparation. I can see this being a marketing nightmare: biodynamic wine should be immediately attractive to anyone with an inner-hippy like me. Unfortunately the inner-hippy doesn’t want to eat meat, unlike the inner-goth who lives for devouring flesh. The inner-hippy likes organic things, super-foods, healthy foods, quirky foods and eschews intensively produced products, products saturated with additives, eggs yolks made more yellow by colouring, animals given hormones, chickens raised in barnes. Food production can be a litany of horrors but biodynamics could be the salve.

                  But another truth that has been brought forcefully home during my time here is that as soon as you grow food you put yourself in competition with other fauna for that resource. Here there is a constant battle with animal life to preserve the grapes until they can be schnipped: rabbits, birds and wasps. And there are casualties. While what I t0ok to be the crack of hunters taking pot-shots at hunters are actually mostly harmless gas guns designed to scare off the birds, real guns are also employed during the mornings and early evenings when the birds are most likely to be feeding. The wasps follow the birds and if possible will be followed back to the nests where they are exterminated. Rabbits are simply shot out of hand, but then they are an introduced species that wreaks incredible ecological damage on this delicate island. These remain an uncomfortable truth for me, but then which foodstuffs don’t have blood on their hands? How vegetarian are vegetables? Because crops have to be protected otherwise there is no point labouring throughout the growing season, as well as the various preperations necessary for it during the winter, if at the end of the day the crop is lost to a competitor. It is a debate that I am yet to resolve and one that requires much greater knowledge than I yet possess. However I love that biodynamics provokes this, I love also the conversations that it has often provoked between me and Andrew, as we would discourse on these and others while picking, me citing my anthropological learning and him his philosophical background (Ann said it was like listening to Radio 4, hearing us talk, so I’ll have to tune in to see whether I have been insulted or not). Biodynamics is more than simply a farming method, it is a lore, a philosophy and a spiritual approach to growth. And its always enjoyable working with Central Otago’s second best Young Viticulturalist in  Nik.

                   There’s more to tell but I’ll spare you for now. The end of the harvest signalled more than one party, including a costume one where I was Barney Rubble. Many of the people I picked with are going their diverse ways (we lost Ann yesterday and the Swede this morning), and indeed the vineyard now quiets while the winery takes on the bulk of the work. We had a tour and I got to taste newly fermenting grapes, and it had me itching to be there working with them to forge the wine from the grapes I had helped pick. Now I am in Te Anua, about to head for Milford Sound and a boat cruise. I’m seeing if I can find more work but there are slim picking as the harvest is being wrapped up and other vineyard’s picking crews full. For now I am enjoying some companionship with the newly christened Herman ze German and the American girl. Incredibly last night we found some drunk Irish lads in a hostel in Queenstown that were actually louder than her.