Moon over Martinborough

John from down the road walked in and set an unlabelled bottle of red wine on our kitchen counter. That was the first time I saw that wine.

It was two years ago, at a dinner party Rick and I were throwing for our neighbors.

“This is a special wine,” John said. “You can’t buy it anywhere.”

Something about the unlabeled bottle seemed vaguely illicit, as though a dodgy liquor store owner had started whispering to me about his secret stash.

I suppose I hadn’t seen a full, unlabeled bottle of wine since I was a boy, when we lived in Minnesota and my dad decided it would be a good idea to make ‘dandelion wine’ in the basement. It must have been horrible wine, since I only remember picking the dandelions for it once. I don’t think he ever repeated the experiment.

I eyed John and his unlabelled bottle suspiciously. “What kind of wine is it?”

“Good wine,” he said, and then told me the story of where it came from.

Origin of the mystery wine

An award-winning winemaker who worked for one of the large Martinborough vineyards owned a relatively small, private vineyard next to his house. It was in a secluded valley not far from us, and it was planted with Pinot Noir. John managed the small vineyard part time and did the pruning himself.

This wine was from that private vineyard, given to John by the winemaker.

My suspicion eased. Certainly this wine would have to be better than any weed-infused home brew concocted by my father in our Minnesota basement.

When I told John about my dad’s wine, he tipped back his grey beard and laughed.

“I assure you,” he said. “This wine contains no dandelions.”

Martinborough Pinot Noir

In recent years Martinborough has gained international recognition for the quality of its Pinot Noir. They say the hot summer, cool nights, long dry autumn, and free draining soil combine to make the area ideally suited to the grape, much like the Dijon climate in Burgundy.

Pinot Noir grapes - image from Wikipedia

The name Pinot Noir means ‘black pine’ in French and it comes from the fact that the dark purple grapes are tightly clustered in a pine cone shape. It’s an ancient grape, still very closely related to its wild forbearers.

It’s notoriously difficult to cultivate and turn into wine. But in 2007 alone, 12 medals were given to various Martinborough vineyards for their Pinot Noir at the prestigious Romeo Bragato awards in Auckland. So the winemakers of Martinborough must be doing something right.

Tasting the mystery wine

John opened the wine and poured us each a glass. I lifted the glass to my nose, inhaled, tasted.

I’m not a professional wine wanker, so I’m not that good at describing wines, but if I had to try I’d say this wine tasted of dark cherries and spice, with something like cranberries in it too. The flavor was rich and deep and full in my mouth. Honestly, it was incredible.

John told me the story of how he’d once taken this wine to a winemaker’s dinner. Everyone brought expensive bottles of French wine, which would have cost a hundred dollars or more. The bottle John brought was the only one unlabelled, and it was one of the first bottles emptied.

In the months that followed my first taste of that wine, I had the good fortune to drink from a few more of John’s precious bottles of it.

Summer passed, the grape harvest came and went, and when it was time for John to prune back the vines in the winemaker’s vineyard, I asked if I could help.

John, apparently still unaware of how absolutely useless I am at any agricultural activity, said yes.

The winemaker’s vineyard

Early on a Saturday morning John picked me up in his ute and we drove off to that secluded valley.

The winemaker wasn’t home, and John and I got straight to work. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and the pine trees on a distant hillside were a dark, rich green.

A vineyard is laid out with wires running the length of the rows, to support the vines. I didn’t know that before I moved here.

All the grape leaves in the winemaker’s vineyard had fallen by then, so there was nothing left but empty vines climbing up and out from their woody trunk, and the wires running back and forth. It was large and barren and beautiful, almost like an enormous art installation, something from Christo.

I liked being in the vineyard that had produced the Pinot Noir I’d enjoyed so much all summer. The winemaker’s historic wooden house just beyond the vines was charming. The spot was a slice of heaven.

Learning how to prune

John showed me what to do. I had to select two good leaders for each vine and tie them to the wire, one leader heading off to the left and one off to the right. All the other leaders I had to snip off. Each vine ended up in a neat and tidy ‘T’.

Vine in winter

The difficulty was in the tying.

We didn’t use rope, or string. Instead we used soft, round, elastic things that looked like something my American nieces would use to tie back their hair.

There was a very complicated and important way of turning and looping these silly little hair ties so they held the vine firmly yet didn’t constrict growth in any way.

“First you do this,” John said, moving his hair tie around the vine. “Then you do this, and then –” Suddenly his hands spun in a wild and incomprehensible blur. “You do that and you’re done.”

There in front of me, his vine was tied back as if by magic.

“Not too tight, not too loose,” he said, pulling at the vine.

I was confused. “Sorry. Could you show me that again? I missed a step.”

John took out another hair tie. “First this, then this, then –” Once again his hands spun and blurred. “You’re done.”

I had to ask for several repeat performances before I was able replicate the magical spinning part. But in the end I got it.

Still, all day long I struggled to keep pace. John was amazing. Every time he tied a vine, the speed of his hands caused sonic booms to ring out across the valley. Then he was quickly on to the next.

We worked near each other, talking here and there. The sun felt fantastic. John never said a word about how slow I was.

Splitting a case

When that year’s harvest was ready, John procured for himself half a case of that amazing Pinot Noir, at a good price. Our neighbour Jim managed to wangle a half a case as well.

Somehow I missed out on the high-level negotiations and ended up wineless, but John and Jim assured me there would be plenty of those nice bottles showing up at neighborhood dinner parties, so I took heart. I also put my hand up for buying half a case the following year.

Shortly after that, the winemaker sold his vineyard.

An American bought it. The American had a horse. There was one problem.

The paddock in front of the house was full of pesky grape vines.

Yes, you know what he did.

He pulled them out.

I don’t really understand why somebody would move to a wine-making region and pull out established, beautiful vines. But that’s what he did.

Suddenly the wine that John and Jim held in their possession was priceless.

And the name of it, at least in my mind, became ‘Horse Paddock Pinot’.

Dinner party

Last weekend Jim and Kiwi Bronwyn invited Rick, me, John, and Aussie Bronwyn over for dinner. Rick and I put on our gum boots, crossed the top paddock, and hopped the fence. Kiwi Bronwyn had made the most incredible roast ham from one of their own pigs.

John brought his last bottle of Horse Paddock Pinot.

Jim was horrified. “No. Not your last bottle,” he said. “You take that home. I have three bottles. We’ll open one of mine.”

Jim put the bottle by the door and pulled out one of his own.

The six of us then sat at the table together, talking and laughing, eating deliciously tender ham, and drinking that wine.

It was as amazing as the first time I tasted it — the cherry and spice, the hints of cranberry, the full rich way it occupies you. I remembered the vineyard, the winemaker’s old house, the sun in the pine trees nearby.

Although that wine is precious, and although there will never be any more, Jim and John clearly are not wine hoarders. It is such good wine that it almost demands to be enjoyed with friends who appreciate it as much as you. I’m very lucky my neighbors share.

At the end of the evening, we took score, or we counted down, as the case may be.

John now has one bottle. Jim has two.

I can only say that I hope I get to help drink them.

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