Vinoculation

“No, we keep going straight. This is the right road.”

I knew. Like an invisible magnet, the hidden path to the Hill of Grace vineyard was etched in serendipitous marker on the surface of my mind. The Spiritual Homecoming. The Gnadenberg Church loomed in the distance as we coasted up the rise, the car drawing to a halt aside a well maintained vineyard on a gentle, north-facing slope.

There were butterflies. Not in the air, but in my tummy. I started smiling, and I didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. Here I was, at the Hill of Grace. I cast a leg over the fence bordering the road and stepped onto the Church Block. Then I took a deep breath, inhaling fresh, clean, midday air that exuded Spring whispers from a vivacious midday sun. Call it fate - the date was September 1.

I began to walk, slowly at first, in a circumspect sort of way as though I was treading unceremoniously on holy ground. I spied the gnarled, chunky, grotesque old vines of the Grandfather Block in the distance and my slow walk became a pacing stride. I started running.

These vines are not the oldest shiraz vines in the world, nor are they the oldest in Australia, I’ve since found out. Planted circa 1860, they post-date the oldest vines in the region by some twenty years. Surprisingly, they still maintain a degree of reasonable vigour and output five tonnes of fruit per hectare (there are eight hectares on the site, though not all of it is shiraz). The buds looked swollen, but there was no sign of sap run unlike the younger and lower altitude Edelstone vineyard.

I ran my hands over the coarse bark. I ran my eyes over the tortuous extremities. I was watching and touching history, almost 150 years of it. The beasts from the original plantings were holding their own, though not without battle scars from the past. Entire trunks had split and separated, in essence creating two vines that had fallen over long ago, unable to support their own weight. Yet they live on.

The vines of the Mt Edelstone vineyard are substantially younger, but we’re still talking circa 100 year old vines. The sap had started running on these old buggers and I can neither confirm nor deny that I may have had an intimate moment with an Edelstone vine, pilfering a quick sample of sappy lifeblood and planting a tender kiss…

My affinity for Henschke stems from a very privileged upbringing by parents that cared about wine. The 1990 Henschke Hill of Grace was the wine that opened my eyes; the turning point in my life, the illuminating shrine for my future existence. When Mum and Dad have deemed circumstances appropriate, an assortment of aged Henschkes have been forthcoming from the crypts of their cellar. Some exceptional, many memorable, rarely disappointing.

I can now check the box on my “do before I die” list for the HoG Visit, though I anticipate many more visits to come in the future.