Wild Ferment - Why you should buy local wine

“Always remember the three W’s – weather, women and wampum.” This was the instruction from my journalism tutor in the olden days before the World Wide Web. He was drilling us on what makes news: weather, sex and money (wampum are Native American beads, used as currency).

In Marlborough there is another W: wine. And there has been a lot of it in the news lately. Not just the usual briefs about award-winning Sauvignon Blanc, but the more disturbing news of wineries and a large contract vineyard going into receivership, with others expected to follow.

The double-whammy of bumper harvests and a world recession means lots more wine, but not such thirsty markets. This translates into harder times for the growers and sellers of Marlborough wine. Among the wine industry there’s a feeling of “don’t mention the war” or, if that doesn’t wash, “spirit of the Blitz”.

Outside the wine community is the more unsettling sense of Schadenfreude – enjoying someone else’s misfortune. That’s never a healthy response, but even worse in a closely connected place like Marlborough where our economy has become reliant on a buoyant grape industry. There are knock-on effects throughout the community: the builder who loses a job because his client (a grower) didn’t make any money this harvest; the cleaner who is laid off by a winery cutting costs; the landlord who can’t find tenants because vineyard staff have been cut; the car salesman with a chock-a-block yard because wallets are staying clamped shut.

Depending on your point of view, grapes have brought employment, prosperity, sophistication, diversity, tourists, pesticides, noise pollution, crime, a monotonous landscape and too many 4WDs. I think about this as I squelch down through the rows of vines at Clos Henri, bundling up the prunings to fuel a French-style barbecue. It is a clear blue Sunday morning and the view across the valley to the Richmond Range is priceless. For the 50 or so people at this Slow Food gathering, grapes have brought good things to eat and drink and good people to do it with.

For those who make a living from growing things – whether it is cherries, apples, sheep or grapes – there’s always risk attached. Markets fall over. Disease hits. Frost wipes out crops. Before grapes we had farmers, and the ones that are left know how to roll with the punches. In the middle of the wet winter a farming friend says: “It’s a waste of time complaining about the weather, you can only do your best.”

That could be translated to: “It’s a waste of time complaining about the recession, you can only do your best.” For wineries, that means treat the growers fairly and keep making high quality wine. For banks, it means stand by and take some of the pain. For the rest of us, it means shelve the Schadenfreude and buy local. Even better, buy a Marlborough label at full price rather than be tempted by the $8.99 special.

And pay with cash, not wampum.