As the long dry continues in Victoria, we are tidying up the vines by reducing the number of new shoots and fruit bunches. We have no water for our vines, so we do what we can to help them through the summer.

Our vineyard is tiny, about a quarter of an acre, and contains 400 Pinot Noir vines and 120 Riesling vines. We joke that the Pinot will provide a barrel of red wine and the Riesling will provide “a little white for the ladies”. But the truth is, Riesling is now my favourite wine, the vines are far easier to grow, and the granitic soils we sit upon should be perfect for this variety.

Global warming might be doing its bit also. In the past, Riesling was considered too hard to ripen in our region of the Mecedon Ranges, but the last few autumns have been warm and dry enough to ripen our fruit until late May.

I am passionate about wine. This passion was born in my youth. My dad always had a collection of dusty bottles under the house and sometimes he would drag one up and him and his mates would pop the cork and then Ooh and Aah for awhile while they tasted it. The whole operation seemed like a fabulous ritual. When I left home for University, I started drinking wine more out of economic necessity than interest. A cask of wine was cheaper and lasted longer in our share house than the beer in the fridge.

In the backyard of our small, inner city tenancy was a huge grapevine covering a trellis. Doubtless an Italian family owned the house many years ago and their legacy shaded half of our backyard. Reg, my housemate, and I took a bunch of the grapes to the Australian Wine Exhibition in the grand old Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne.

We fronted up to a wine magazine stand and produced the bunch from a bag we carried. We asked them what variety the grapes were. The two wine journos who manned the stand ate a couple of berries, creased their foreheads, nodded sagely at each other, then spat the pips.

“Foxy,” said the tall one.

“Mmm,”’ said the other. ‘Spicy. A Zin, perhaps. Maybe something Italian.”

We were impressed, but disappointed. We wanted Cabernet, Shiraz, something big and preferably something we knew. Over twenty years have passed since then and I have learnt a thing or two about wine in the interim. Learnt enough to know they likely had no idea what the grapes were, but were guessing based on the fact that the grapes came from an old vine in a small backyard in Carlton.

We spent a long time that evening at the Wynns Coonawarra stand, thus establishing a love affair with the Wynns Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon that still continues today. We tasted the wines, but soon ran out of tasting coupons. The Wynns stand was very busy and each time the server turned to get another bottle, we topped up our tasting glasses behind his back. I was barely nineteen then, and would not be able to afford a bottle of Wynns Black Label for another eight years. I have a cellar full of dusty Wynns bottles now.

We opened a 1993 last Saturday night. It was still alive and kicking and as I drank it, I remembered again that crazy night and the Cabernet-fuelled fun that ensued on our drunken walk home through the back streets of Carlton, a stolen bottle of Black Label in our show bag nestled against a half-eaten bunch of something spicy. A Zin perhaps. Or perhaps something Italian.