Moon over Martinborough

Escarpment wines

It was almost 9:30 am and the floodgates were about to open.

Literally thousands of wine lovers would soon be swarming around the large white festival tent and the outdoor stage at the Escarpment pavilion of Toast Martinborough.

I had already received my red Escarpment Vineyard T-shirt, and I was waiting to talk to a woman named Cath to find out what my duties for the day were going to be.

Based on my chats with the other volunteers, it seemed the responsibilities varied widely.

The people who’d driven down from the Manawatu Wine Club were all going to be ‘pourers’ – serving fine Escarpment wines and helping people match their wine choices to the amazing food offered by Wharekauhau on the other side of the tent. A couple other people I’d talked to were going to be on ‘rubbish duty.’

What would I end up doing? Would I be one of the wine pourers – who got to wear swank looking black aprons – or would I end up emptying trash bins and picking dirty napkins off the ground all day?

Tiny town, big festival

Back in 1992, little old Martinborough decided to set up a wine and food festival to celebrate what was then a relatively new local wine industry. According to AA Travel, Toast Martinborough is now the biggest food and wine festival in New Zealand.

Although the population of our town is only 1,300, on the day of ‘Toast’ it swells to over 10,000. Busloads of people are carted over the treacherous Rimutaka Hill Road from Wellington and dropped off at our charming town square.

From there they wander from vineyard to vineyard, wearing wine glasses on strings around their necks (their ‘ticket’ into the vineyards), eating food from the best restaurants and caterers in the region, listening to great live bands and, most importantly, drinking fabulous Martinborough wines. Not a bad way to spend a day.

Rotary club member at the gate

Although Toast is a large-scale and smoothly run operation, it’s also a kind of community event. The local Rotary club pitches in, and people from the region often help out at the various vineyards.

I had met the winemaker of Escarpment, Larry McKenna, on Twitter. His Twitter handle is @LarryMcPinot, and he’s one of the most respected winemakers in New Zealand. I’d offered to help and he’d said yes, so there I was.

Receiving my assignment

Finally Cath came over to me. She had long, blond hair and came across as highly organized. In the short time she spoke to me she was interrupted by at least three other people. Everyone had questions for Cath, and she answered them all calmly and graciously.

Now she looked at the clip board which held my destiny. “You’re on security,” she said.

I looked around me. There was nobody else there. She was definitely talking to me.

Let me just explain that I am no 6 foot 2, muscle-bound bouncer. I’m 5 foot 10 inches tall on a good day, and just last week I walked into a shoe repair shop to get another hole punched in my quickly shrinking black leather belt. (The shoe guy smiled and said, “Keep it out of water.”)

Very few people would look at me and think, “That guy could keep the drunken masses in line.”

Hay bales and wine barrels

Obviously I had misunderstood Cath. Although I’ve been in NZ 6 years and have adjusted to Kiwi accents, every once in a while I still meet someone I have a little trouble understanding. Cath had probably said something like ‘You’re on cellar keys.”

I asked for clarification. “Um, Did you say security?”

“Yeaaah. It’s easy.” She tilted her head back and waved her hand in the air. “You just walk around and make sure everything is okay. If a tent flap needs to be tied down, you see to it. If there’s somebody’s passed out in front of the toilets, you make sure they’re okay. Get them a glass of water. That kind of thing.”

“And if a drunk guy starts a fight?”

“Oh, we’ve got real security for that.”

Clearly Cath had noticed my lack of muscle. In two seconds I’d gone from feeling surprised I was on security to feeling slighted that I wasn’t on real security.

Cath explained. “If someone’s had too much to drink and they’re out of line, you just go find one of the guys in the bright yellow vests.” She pointed across the way at two huge men with dark sunglasses, thick arms, and day-glo vests.

In the end, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was basically a nark. All I had to do was tug on the sleeves of the big guys and say, ‘That one. Over there. You go get him.’

This was a security job I could handle.

Nothing to do

There’s always somebody telling stories about how drunk people get at Toast Martinborough, but I’m here to say it’s not true. Of course people are drinking wine, but I can testify, as a kind of an undercover cop, that the security guys on this particular day at the Escarpment pavilion of Toast Martinborough had surprisingly little to do.

The bottom line was that the crowd was incredibly well behaved. Everybody was too busy having fun to cause any trouble.

A whole lotta empty bottles

Over the first couple of hours I opened up some canvas sides to the festival tent, secured other tent flaps in the ferocious wind, walked around the back of the stage to see what was there, and then had a nice, long chat with the one other ‘security’ volunteer – a really nice farmer from Gladstone.

In fact, I had so little to do that I eventually ended up helping out with a million other things. I carried in case after case of wine from the refrigerated truck out back, took a dizzying amount of empty bottles over to an enormous wooden skip, kept the water bottles filled up at the pouring tables, made a run with Escarpment’s viticulturist to pick up a trailer for trash bags, and chatted briefly with the assistant winemaker when it was slow.

Throughout the day, festival tents at two other vineyards actually lifted off the ground under the force of 120 kph gusts (75 mph). Fortunately nobody was hurt. No such excitement happened Escarpment. If it had, at least the guys on security would have had something to do.

My first (and last) security job

Then, around 2.30, when the crowd was at its peak, one of the pourers came over to me. Her name was Kristina and she was part of the Manawatu Wine Club.

“I hear you’re on security,” she said.

I considered denying it, but eventually said yes.

Pourers serving the masses

She explained that there were two young men who were ‘pissed’ (that means drunk to all the Americans in the house) and who had been repeatedly denied alcohol by the pourers. But these guys kept going up to different pourers trying to get more wine.

“They’re getting a bit stroppy,” Kristina said.

I asked her to point them out to me in the crowd, and she did so from a safe distance.

I then marched right over to those two hooligans, picked both of them up at once, and carried them – one under each arm – out the front gate.

No I didn’t. I went and got the big guys.

The big guys went over and talked to the young men quietly, and suddenly the young men were leaving. It was all very civilized. No fuss. No muss.

A good day

Sola Rosa performing at Escarpment

What amazed me was that, with the thousands and thousands of people that walked in and out of the Escarpment gate that day, there were only two people who’d had too much to drink and got a bit messy. Two. That’s all.

What I saw was people having a really good time with friends, laughing, dancing, eating and drinking. The band at Escarpment was Sola Rosa, and they were fantastic. And those Escarpment wines, aaahhh! There’s a reason Larry’s got the reputation he has.

All in all, I was very impressed.

I went home with two bottles of Escarpment wine in my hands, and I was a happy, exhausted man.

____________________

Related posts

Read other stories about:

• Escarpment Vineyard
• wine and vineyards
• food

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Other websites

Check out the following websites:

• Escarpment Vineyard
• Toast Martinborough
• Sola Rosa
• Wharekauhau Luxury Lodge

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under New Zealand, Wine & vineyards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.