Editorial: Enjoyment begins at the vine

It is the year of the bee. Photo/Thinkstock

The mythology of the grape just got deeper.

See, on Saturday I spent the day with my family helping friends harvest their pinot gris.

After a day snipping, stacking and chatting with experts I realised how little I know of our provincial berry and its cultivation.

Handed a new pair of secateurs and forewarned as to how sharp they were, I proceeded to snip my left forefinger twice in an hour. Dripping claret into the terroir would be romantic if it weren't so painful.

According to my host, this was the year of the bee. Starved of food, there's never been so many buried in berries. Perhaps that's why my son was stung three times on the hand by workers hell-bent on an early sample of the vintage.

The native tauhou (silver-eye) is another vintner's nemesis. Its diminutive stature makes it too small to gobble a berry whole, so instead it punctures each only once, before moving its sticky beak to the next.

Yet here's the paradox with this pest. Apparently a single peck dehydrates the grape, and if the rain stays away, the flavours therein concentrate and can make for a stellar drop.

Picking on the same Maraekakaho vineyard in 2012 was a different story. Unseasonal rain had encouraged a widespread rot. But again, I'm told the dusty harvest was later rendered into gold medal-winning rose.

What I formerly thought were parasitic influences, can in fact be symbiotic. The grape endures.

It dawned on me that an acid-sweet mouthful of grapes takes you on a similar journey to wine tasting. I guess appreciation begins at the vine.

With a raw product as exquisite as this, I can't wait for what comes post-crush.