Deirdre Macken
Allen & Unwin
RRP. $32.99
“Growing Grapes Might Be Fun” for author Deidre Macken; then again it may not be to the mind of a rational reader. Particularly so if you didn’t have to service a big mortgage and you had enough funds to wait out the five years it takes to grow, harvest grapes and follow the process through to bottling the wine.
The author also tells us the first grapes harvested may not turn into drinkable wine and may not yield a worthwhile financial return. So, despite enthusiastic assurances from Deidre that it might be worth a punt, I would personally find it difficult to draw from her experiences as an inexperienced farmer to follow through in the way she and her husband have done.
But then again perhaps I don’t have a generous mother to give me the land to play with as happened to Deidre and her husband Roger, both former journalists, when they found themselves made redundant.
So all hail to them anyway for taking the plunge to develop a vineyard establishing a crop of grape bearing vines at Cockatoo Hill, a 100-hectare property outside Yass, in NSW.
The word was that a few hectares of the sheep grazing property owned by her mother Ann, might be good land for grape growing and Deidre’s large loving family and children were willing to help them with the intensive planting and harvesting.
Then there was their collective daydream of sitting on a sunlit terrace of the house, one day in the near future, serving delicious food at a big family lunch, while washing it down with their locally- grown vintage, toasting their successful tree change.
Like all dreams, it didn’t include having to clear the land from what seemed like endless amounts of garbage amounting to taking ten separate skips to the landfill, the legacy of decades of occupation by former owners and careless tenants.
The house was falling down and needed rebuilding, but until that could be attended to Deirdre and Roger had to drive each weekend from Sydney to Cockatoo Hill. There were also regular times when there was so much work to do, that they’d have to camp there for several weeks which meant taking sleeping bags and picnic food.
Before planting, the ground had to be ploughed and fertilised to give the baby vines a chance and the weather was a fingers-crossed exercise not knowing whether frost at the wrong time would cause havoc to new plants.
It is at this point in Deidre and Roger’s journey that one would wish for a fairy godmother. That didn’t eventuate. The weather sent them a few storms which knocked down some huge old trees, hail which damaged the new shoots on the vines along with hungry locusts and, on one occasion, a small mob of sheep who had escaped their paddocks, entered the vineyard and chewed every bit of green growth they could reach.
This second career by now may not look enticing to those in the city and it probably sounds irrational, but Deirdre decided this project spoke to her heart. She explains; “you hear the call of another self, it’s liberating, you escape the cage of your age, you ‘ve heard the nay-sayers and decided you’re still going to do it.”
By the time drought and then bush fires arrived, Deirdre and Roger had been working the land for three years and both felt too invested in the labour and money they had spent on the project. Deirdre says during her journalist career economists often referred to this as sunk-cost fallacy; others might call it throwing good money after bad.
“We hadn’t thought about walking away except for a few moments of hot temper,” she says.
Her bigger fear was welcoming her friends and experiencing how they would respond to her new identity when they came to visit the property. “Would they say, cut it out, Deirdre, you don’t like this stuff, who do you think you’re kidding; a pretend farmer, pretend winegrower, put your work gloves away and get a manicure.”
“In fact, the weekend went well,” she says. “We built a fire, ate sausages, visited mum, walked up the big hill, saw lambs, ate dinner at a fine restaurant and played golf the next day. I even trailed them through the decrepit part of the house telling them “it’s just a crash pad and needs demolishing.”
When they left, I asked myself why I was so unnerved by my initial reaction to their visit. I suppose we define ourselves by our work,’ she says. It’s our identity even though she is normally unfussed by what people think of her.
The book contains a lot of Dierdre’s inner thoughts and feelings. It is not just about farming facts and fears of encountering snakes and other unwanted wildlife. It is well written with a lot of humour, interesting insights and close observations of farm life.
It is a book probably more appreciated by city folk than country dwellers, for Dierdre can’t tell country folk of her trials and tribulations because this is par for the course for those who live in country and regional Australia.
In five years, they finally harvested two-and-a-half tonnes of grapes from the vines of sangiovese and shiraz. “It took eleven workers, seven hours of work and it all went so smoothly it almost felt creepy,” says Dierdre. “So many things could have gone wrong and didn’t.”
Their first harvesting was sent for bottling and the process yielded just one and a half pallets, just over sixty-five boxes which is not a lot of return for tens of thousands of dollars and four years of hard work. “Gounyan Wines” is the label to look out for.
Still, Deirdre and Roger are pleased it tastes so good. Their verdict: “a fresh lively wine, leaving a slightly acidic taste.”
They are proud their first wine crop survived storms, drought and their own mistakes in securing their vines and that it ripened during a wet and cool summer. “It is its environment. It is its soil. It is what it is meant to be. Enjoyed”.
Sherry Stumm