Vintage 2026: Nostalgia vs The Future
Nostalgia: a sentimental yearning for the past…
As parents of teenagers, we often look back fondly on the days when they occasionally did what we asked, and we didn’t have to repeat every sentence due to AirPod-induced selective hearing…
Each vintage, Facebook memories pop up showing us in the vineyard with the kids as toddlers, reminding us how much Alexia has infiltrated our lives. But this year’s vintage was also a lesson in the potential of the future as we passed the baton of one of the hardest vintage jobs to the next generation.
Pick-ups – the task of loading the picking bins of grapes onto a trailer and then lifting those little bins off the trailer and tipping them into the big bins on the back of the ute - was this year delegated to our teens, Vita and Tom.
A 2-tonne hand-pick requires 4 tonnes of lifting…and a vintage of lots of little hand-picks adds up to a lot of lifting. Many grapes were lifted, money was earned, and the mums were grateful to come out of the vintage slightly less broken than usual.
Our last pick of vintage this year was Lagrein – an Italian red from northern Italy. A beautifully savoury, darkly fruited, inky coloured wine that’s all blackberry and wood-smoke.
Jane first made Lagrein when winemaking in Italy’s Trento region. The winery she worked in was a co-operative, making wine for many vineyards, with designated days for different grapes. This was pre-internet, so picking days were communicated via an ad in the local paper…something along the lines of “Saturday is Lagrein day – bring your grapes then”.
On the day, grapes would arrive from throughout the region – from large trailers carrying hundreds of kilos, to old grandads on motorbikes with a crate or two strapped to the back.
Jane still talks about it - the colour of those grapes, the smell of the ferment and the experience of being a small part of something that illustrated so much about Italy and its winemaking culture.
It’s that nostalgia that led us here, almost 20,000 kilometres away, to make our own Lagrein. It seems well-suited to Wairarapa conditions - a wine of the future for us.
Our 2025 vintage will be released in July. We can’t wait to pour a glass, breathe it in and relive some fond memories from the past.
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