Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga

by Todd Alexander

  I could have just answered, ‘From the water mains on the outskirts of town that you’re authorised to tap into,’ but I knew what answer he was expecting and played along in the role of gormless townie. Anything for an easy life, that’s me.

  ‘Erm, from the sky?’

  ‘Exactly! And if it doesn’t rain, we don’t get any. It’s that simple.’

  While Phil went on, I reflected that a handful of the local suppliers seemed to delight in either pointing out our ignorance or trying to take advantage of it. Luckily, Jeff’s acute sense of right and wrong meant he always challenged this.

  When one of the very expensive sprayers we bought for the tractor broke during the last of one of Jeff’s sprays at the end of April as he tried to keep the vines free of disease, the retailer sent a mechanic to repair it. He looked about twelve.

  ‘I’ve never seen one like this before,’ he began – and that really isn’t what you want to hear from someone who’s been sent to mend your $12,000 sprayer.

  He worked away on it for an hour, tinkering and swearing, muttering under his breath and then, rather proud of himself, declared that it was fixed. Jeff turned on the sprayer and opened the valves, and it still wasn’t working properly.

  ‘That’s not fixed,’ Jeff said patiently. ‘They should be spraying like this . . .’ and he showed the guy what he meant. After another two hours, the guy finally succeeded, mostly because Jeff talked him through how it needed to be done.

  When the bill came in for the service, we’d been charged a call-out fee, the first hour’s consultation and then an escalating rate for the second and (even higher) third hours.

  Jeff instantly called the retailer to complain, pointing out that it was his own fault for sending a mechanic unfamiliar with the equipment he was supposed to fix. The guy argued; Jeff stood his ground; finally the retailer snapped.

  ‘I tell you what, mate! I’ll charge you for just one hour but you’re never to come back into my shop ever again and if you ever want your machinery fixed don’t bother calling us.’ And he slammed down the phone.

  So every time Jeff says he’s off to the local industrial area of Rutherford I worry which shop-owner he’s going to offend next – I suspect his face features on a poster above cash registers around town with the words: NEVER SERVE THIS MAN. HE IS AN ARSEHOLE.

  That is, of course, unless he’s going to one of the furniture stores, where they know him by name, greet him warmly, refer to him as one of their best customers and frequently give him generous discounts. Perhaps the cushion sellers of the Inner West spread the news that Jeff is one to keep onside. In those stores there’s probably also a photo of Jeff behind the counter, only it reads: JEFF. VIP. SHOW CUSHIONS.

  Unlike Jeff, whatever the situation I always play Mr Nice Guy, even when the locals insist on testing me.

  ‘Where’s your fella?’ Phil asked now.

  ‘That’s him up in the vines, spraying.’ I pointed.

  ‘What’s he spraying?’

  I shrugged. Jeff had undertaken his chemical-handling course and although I knew it was either sulphur, copper, weed killer or bug killer, on any given day I was never interested enough to know which was in use. He wasn’t all that interested in my jams, after all. Phil looked about the shed and saw a chemical container on the ground.

  ‘See that there, mate? See what it says?’

  ‘Poison?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Exactly! One drop of that shit on his skin, mate, and your fella is a goner. Dead. One drop and that’ll kill him, mate!’

  ‘He knows what he’s doing,’ I offered, but Phil was unconvinced.

  ‘I dunno with you boys . . .’

  At least we’d graduated from ‘ladies’.

  Not even Phil could dampen our excitement at the development of the grapes. When they are dormant throughout winter there is nothing much to see, but then from bud burst in spring, the tiny grey-green leaves appear before a small shoot develops – the stage that had got me all goose-bumpy with orchids and butterflies the previous year. The growth comes on so quickly, by the middle of spring there is a sea of green leaves, and soon after tiny flowers appear. They look like a dwarf grape bunch, sparsely spread, then the white wispy flowers turn into tiny hard green balls and these are the beginning of the grapes – green for many weeks before the plant decides to invest all of its energy into producing fruit and (in a process called veraison) the grapes turn from green to red (Shiraz), yellowish (Chardonnay) or a lime-green (Semillon). That we would be harvesting our first fruit in the new year was a milestone in our journey we could barely wait for.

  The First Sip

  By late October 2013, council had approved our villa plans. We paid a company $45,000 to erect the three sheds and it was time to find a builder to fit out their interiors, plus work on the accessible villa inside our machinery shed. Despite my valiant attempts to appear macho in company with ‘real men’, I’m really not great at communicating with actual blokes and I was amazed when Jeff took it upon himself to go and chat to the builders he’d seen working on one of our neighbours’ properties. After a brief chat, they agreed to move onto our job next.

  Pete reminded me of a young Paul Hogan. He was short and buff, and had Hogan’s humour to boot. His crew consisted of his young son, Cassh, and an older carpenter called Colin. Where possible, I avoided them, leaving all that blokey builder talk to Jeff. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t want them to know we were gay, because I always worry that people will take advantage of Jeff and charge him more than they would any straight guy. But Jeff quickly showed them that he knew what he was talking about, and often worked with them in the shed, toiling away with one of his new tools, asking questions and learning as much as he could.

  I couldn’t pretend I didn’t exist so when Jeff asked me to make ‘the boys’ a Friday lunch of hamburgers, I knew it was probably the easiest way for me to win them over. Ina Garten had taught me to put a small knob of butter inside the burger patty and as a result they were lush and juicy. I made an array of toppings, and took over a massive tray of wedges as a side.

  ‘Christ mate, that’s a good burger,’ Pete said.

  ‘Oh this old thing? I throw these together every Friday,’ I joked.

  And quick as a whip Pete said, ‘I’ll be here!’

  Over the following weeks I continued to take the boys treats, happy to play the role of ‘farmer’s wife’ when fuck me it was obvious I would have been utterly useless doing any of the building work, unless they asked me for an extra bit of muscle to lift a heavy beam or move a pile of wood, which sometimes they did.

  In December 2013, the end of our first calendar year at Block Eight, I turned forty. At my thirtieth I surprised everyone with a rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘I’m Still Here’ with lyrics I created myself, suggesting that if my family and friends thought I was about to behave like a mature thirty year old, they were sadly mistaken. I made everyone wear black to mourn the death of my youth, but then changed half-way through the night into a sparkly gold-sequined jacket to sing my song.

  I wanted to do something equally memorable for my fortieth. You know, being so shy and withdrawn is often crippling but I was willing to make an exception for one more night of ‘It’s all about me!’

  Jeff and I set to work on our secret project a few months ahead of the actual date in December. Mostly it involved a lot of wine, but when the mood took us, we went off and filmed a little video to play on the night of my party.

  ‘So what costumes do you want to wear?’ Jeff emailed me at work one day.

  I sent him a list of eight scenes from movies I would be re-enacting. His passion for cushions may be palpable but another of Jeff’s little-known qualities is an ability to scour op-shops for the perfect copycat outfit. It’s never a precise copy, but he has this uncanny knack of choosing clothes that make a person or scene instantly recognisable. (And let’s face it, one of the worst disappointments ever is rocking up to a fancy dress party and fi
nding yourself having to explain who you are meant to be.) ‘COSTUME SHOPS ARE A COP-OUT’ will probably be Jeff’s epitaph. Oh, that and ‘WASHING LIQUID IS THE ONLY CLEANER ANYONE EVER NEEDS.’

  Sure enough, I came home from work the following day to Jeff’s phenomenally accurate costumes complete with wigs. For months we filmed scene after scene and we both wound up literally on the floor clutching our bellies more times than I can count.

  For my fortieth I invited forty people to sample a nine-course degustation menu and some of the best wines the Hunter has to offer. We started off at sunset down by the dam, drinking Dan’s Moscato and looking up at the beautiful healthy green of the vineyard, knowing that within a few months we would be drinking our own wine! Afterwards, we moved up to the shed, which was mid-conversion. Jeff had cloaked the walls in hessian, and Glen and James, who were out from Canada, beautifully dressed the two long tables that Jeff had made by hand. The meal was phenomenal (I’d done all the preparation and hired a chef to finish off the cooking and help me serve, and a waiter to pour the drinks). Everyone had a printed menu and their place names were written on pieces of grape wood. Cheryl and Dad gave lovely impromptu speeches and when I stood up and proclaimed how very lucky I felt, I very nearly burst into appreciative tears. But the video was still to come.

  ‘There is one person who was not able to make it here tonight . . .’ I began, ‘someone most of you will recognise has been an integral part of my life, who has kept me company for more hours than many of you in this room, and without this person I would have had a very different life . . .’

  The video began to play. In Jeff’s choice of clothes and wigs, my resemblance to each character was uncanny. I did them all: Evil Angels, Out of Africa, Sophie’s Choice, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Mamma Mia, The Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia, The Iron Lady . . . the most recognisable of Meryl Streep’s films and, if I may say so, my audience found it absolutely hysterical. Aside from the wardrobe, the other significant role in the film was played by Block Eight. That a property could look like the desert around Uluru one day, a Greek island the next, and a fog-heavy pier at Lyme Regis in the dead of winter was truly remarkable.

  *

  In early January 2014, Dan visited us again to inspect the crops. In one of those extreme strokes of ridiculous good fortune, it turned out that the 2014 Hunter wine season was one of the best on record because we’d had lots of lovely sunshine, very little rain and the birds and caterpillars had more or less left us alone. Growing grapes really is a cinch, we thought naïvely.

  Dan tasted the Chardonnay grapes first.

  ‘Man, these are good,’ he said, before spitting out the pips. He squeezed grape juice onto his refractometer, an instrument that measures the sugar levels in the juice. Sugar not only helps determine taste, but the sugar percentage will be the alcohol percentage once yeast is added to convert the former to the latter. You don’t want to make a weak wine, but you don’t want to make rocket fuel either.

  ‘There’s not a lot of fruit on them though,’ he continued, ‘and that makes sense because of what you told me about them being left untouched by the previous owners. I reckon you’d get a few tonnes though so why don’t you get some mates around and pull these off yourself, and we’ll make a nice little vintage out of it. I reckon they’ll be ready in about two or three weeks, but bring me another sample next week.’

  We walked over to the Semillon next and again he tasted some grapes and read their sugar level. ‘I’ve always known how good this fruit is,’ he said with a smile on his face. ‘Fuck me, that’s gonna make a delicious wine. We’ll do two sorts – a dry style and a slightly sweeter style. Chicks love the sweet stuff but you want a serious one too so you can cellar it and then sell it for a fortune later.’

  Up over the back of the hill, we made our way finally to the Shiraz.

  ‘Jenny says this will be shit fruit and has never made a good wine,’ I tell Dan.

  He tasted and tested. ‘Nope, she’s wrong. It’s coming along nicely too.’

  We drove back to the house in Dan’s ute, gave him a cup of tea and introduced him to our kids.

  ‘Getting the grapes to harvest day is just the start,’ Dan said and then proceeded to rattle off everything we needed to organise within the next two weeks: call Janell for hand pickers and to hire extra equipment for the harvest or call Jan if you want machine harvest. Call this person to order some barrels – we want maybe American oak for the Chardonnay, medium toast, but while you’re at it, grab some French too. And you could try Flex Cube for the Shiraz so let’s get that organised. You’ll need to call Bluey to come collect the grapes on harvest day, here’s his number. Do you have bins? We’ll need maybe four for the Chardonnay, say eight for the Semillon and about six for the Shiraz. You don’t have bins? Okay, call your neighbours and borrow theirs. What do you mean you don’t talk to your neighbours? Okay, does your tractor have forks? Because you will need to fork the bins onto the truck . . . What? No forks? Okay . . . well you could buy a hand-driven forklift for a few grand or . . . And you should set up a meeting with Russell and Suzanna at Hunter Bottling because you need to slot in well in advance and then you’ll have to pre-order your bottles, boxes, caps . . .

  Our heads were spinning.

  ‘Holy shitballs!’ Vicky said. She and Jane had brought the kids down for the school holidays and she’d accompanied us around the vineyard.

  I felt like vomiting. Jeff and I had agreed that his job would be to get the grapes to harvest. I would take over from there and get the grapes picked then turned into wine and bottled, then (hopefully) sold. I so desperately wanted to quit and convince Jeff that we were kidding ourselves if we thought we could do this. Maybe it would be best to ask Dan if he knew someone who wanted to buy the fruit and they could come and pick it themselves, I thought in a panic. But I let all the information swim around my head and after a few hours sat down and composed an email to Dan. Once I’d got the names of all the people we needed, I sat on the phone and managed to get our harvest and bottling plan into action. Every single individual involved in the process was beyond generous accommodating my lack of knowledge and not one of them made me feel stupid, called me ‘girlie’ or posed a trick question. In particular, Suzanna at the bottling company was so patient and kind, talking us through every single option for packaging. She was incredibly patient with us when we didn’t know any of the terminology and would use phrases like ‘that thing that goes under the other thing’. She and her partner Russell (who co-owns the company) even came to Block Eight to inspect our tractor and advise on how much weight they thought it could take so that when it came time for delivery we wouldn’t struggle to remove the pallets from their truck. To this day, whenever we see Suzanna and Russell we are greeted with genuine warm hugs and they always have time for a good old chat. With each change in process (a new bottle size, a change in materials) they and their staff hold my hand and show understanding and not a hint of annoyance.

  Australia Day, 26 January, was the date chosen by Dan to harvest our Chardonnay. Like the prune-off, we again put the call out to our friends but since it was a public holiday, we received only a modest response. Meredith and her husband, Lachlan, came, of course, as did Mel and Jesus (and their local friends Bec and Jim). With Meredith’s mum Lis, brother Tom, and Ron and Merv we had a neat little crew to harvest our first ever crop. Cheryl was on hand to do all the cooking to feed us regularly. It was a beautiful, momentous day. It was hot and calm in the vines, no breeze to speak of. We’d bought everyone buckets and pincers to remove the fruit and Tom served as bucket boy, running back and forth to pour the fruit into the bin we’d placed on the back of Merv’s ute.

  Our arms were sticky and dirty, our skin burnt despite the sunscreen we’d applied, our backs ached and after twelve hours of continual hand-picking, we’d only collected 800 kilos from the five-acre plot (an optimum yield from a vineyard of that size might be anywhere up to about twelve tonnes). Generous Dan, knowing
it was our first harvest and that Jeff loved Chardonnay, agreed to waive his minimum quantity and those grapes were crushed the very same day to make our first ever barrel of wine – but we were forced to wait over a year for it to mature, and to get our first taste.

  By mid-February all the grapes were picked (shirtless European backpacker pickers being one of the highlights of the season – sure it’s safe to swim in the dam, in you go!) and we would end up with around twelve thousand bottles of wine. In a bumper season this would skyrocket to around thirty thousand bottles and while we were pretty good at drinking the profits away, not even Jeff and I would be able to put a dent in that. At a rough cost of four to five dollars a bottle and at least seven or eight months before we could sell the Semillon, and over twelve months before the Shiraz and Chardonnay could be sold, it also became apparent that, without putting too fine a point on it, our financial situation read: fucked. As my mate Scott reminded me, ‘How do you get a million dollars out of a vineyard? You first put in five million.’

  But with our first wine just months away, it was time to give this business some personality. Two friends of mine, Chris and Verity, had just started their own design agency, Pixel Eight. We didn’t consider asking anyone else to help us create our brand and it was pure coincidence we both featured the lucky number eight in our names. From the moment we saw their vision of what Block Eight could become we were blown away. Because they know us, and had visited us and heard our dreams, they instinctively knew how to encapsulate that in our brand. What really won me over was Chris saying, ‘I imagined you were publishing a cookbook and I worked my way back from there.’ Had he been pitching to Jeff I have no doubt the words ‘cushion’, ‘interior design’ and ‘structural pine’ would have been used. (As part of our brand, Chris designed the heart frame included at the beginning of each chapter in this book.) Things were becoming tangible, and seeing our first wine labels and business cards and launching our website meant that momentum was well underway.