W(h)ine

Today at work I reminisced about days way back in March when I harvested grapes for Stonyridge vineyard and my friend John called it, “a dreams job for realsville” and it was true, we took our sweet time under the shade of the mature vines and painstakingly examined each cluster of grapes in between bursts of laughter and conversation, they fed us lunch and supplied us with beer at the end of each day, a Dionysian paradise right here on earth... (cue soft focus and a gentle yet perky violin quartet) this is me recounting fond memories from “good old days” gone by. Good old days that seem increasingly unreal the more I try to focus in on them.

Blenheim, the heart of Marlborough, is the viticulture capital of New Zealand. Obscene amounts of wine pour from its valleys, each vintage supplying Kiwi's and those abroad with enough alcohol to keep them good and soused until the next. These massive estates hire out contracting services that send out their middle men to recruit the cheapest labor force possible, this is where the backpackers and Malaysians come in. Gathered by the dozens in the wee hours of the morning we are shipped to expansive vineyards to complete paradoxically simple yet backbreaking work on endless rows of plants. What appears to be the easy task of sliding a green tube-shaped bag onto a bamboo stick and over a budding plant is actually a sadistic order to hunch over into a thousand or so lunges until you can't decide whether your thighs, knees, back or calves hurt more.

Sometimes the labor is paid by the hourly minimum wage (which is currently $12.50/hour) and sometimes it is paid per plant completed either as a team or as an individual. The going rate tends to be 3-4 cents for the easier jobs, like the one listed above. Trust me, you are ecstatic if you can earn over one hundred dollars a day. It's enlightening in the sense that if you haven't engaged in habitual manual labor you can't understand what it does to your mind and body (I have only had its acrid seething taste grace my tongue), However, this is the life that millions of people toil under without ever earning enough to sufficiently care for their family. It's shocking to be a part of the dredges of this vast, bottomless abyss of an economic system we so eagerly abide.