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Berg Wind

Vintage is a battle, or more accurately, a very rough game; the best result of which can only be a draw. Nature will never let your ego triumph.

Today Cape Town was smothered by the first warm “Berg Wind” of autumn; pushing up your sinuses with a parched promise of rain. It always arrives announced, introduced by a whispered pronouncement of unexpected heat. It was meant to be 23 oC, but hit 30 oC at 12pm. This wind signals vintage is done, the game is over ñ the final whistle blows into the valley between the oceans and the crumpled granite cliffs, whipping menus off outdoor restaurant tables and buffeting over umbrellas. It comes from behind the Cape Fold Mountains to the north; escaping the semi-desert of the Klein Karoo, where first it twists the tongues of thirsty sheep after descending dustily from the quartz-dry escarpment of our hinterland.

It smells of cracked windmill grease and old Karoo farmhouse Aga stoves. It sounds like a rushed lament, tearing at stiff, brown vine leaves. It is here to harden off cane wood. It is here to soften flat the sea. It is here to baptise winter, to help sharpen our pruning shears and remind us our prayers for rain are being heard.

After the huge effort of vintage you sit in the corner of the changing room of your mind, too drained, too beaten up to move into the shower and away from the stadium. But the crowd outside tells you they know it was a valiant effort, with moments of pure magic that will be savoured for years.

Tomorrow you will enter TV society, surrounded by people understandably insensitive to the subtleties of seasonality. You will focus on packaging your work, selling your wine, dealing with staff needs and customersí demands. You might get too drunk at that dinner party and verbally batter everyone with the horrors of global warming and fall asleep struggling to fathom the apathy.

Where we farm in The Overberg, the wheat farmers are all driving their bakkies a bit slower home, glancing skywards at pillows of blood orange thunderclouds, their sheepdogs smelling the evening star for rain.