Stellar cellar clean-up in wake of cyclone

One man driving, seven to tell him how to do it.

In his infinite patience, he continues to drive the tractor in a series of 90-degree arcs, loading donated apple bins and lent picking bins onto the trailers that back up through the sodden, silt-dug driveway parallel to the site, shared with Zeelandt Brewery and the Cone and Flower eatery.

Ian and his indefatigable wife Linda have driven 55km from their own vineyard to help. Others, including local PGG technical field representative Andrew McNeil and Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers’ head Brent Linn (wearing an uncharacteristic five o’clock shadow), are shuttling backwards and forwards across the region all day long.

The end of the building that faced the flow when the Esk River submerged the valley has piles of slash and sundry arborial detritus wedged up to the eaves. The silt on the side of the building facing the river is just over half a metre deep, or it could be a metre deep – it is impossible to tell if it has returned to antediluvian levels.

Around the back is a mound of silt the height of a person. On it are caved-in cardboard boxes of wine and umpteen clusters of bottes. Torn and sodden cardboard is deposited on the bottles to keep the sunlight off them.

The team has already cut into the cellar and it is draining from a rectangle cut near floor level. The silt is so high, access points to the cellar have been cut into the walls near the roof.

Crouching through the serrated edges and exposed insulation of the building to enter, the first step is a wooden pallet resting on what must be a full pallet of wine. The sludge is over chest-deep in places. It takes the eyes a second or two to adjust. The sloshing echoes. The occasional grunt. Heavy breathing.

In it, up to his waist, is Harry (name changed). I judged Harry harshly when I first saw him, with his bandy-legged, cigarette-smoking swagger; carrying a bluetooth speaker and wearing an impossibly impractical pair of slim black plimsols. But he’s right in the mire, relentlessly heaving out sodden cases of wine.

The following day, we’re joined by a new group, who attack the remaining bottles and silt with insouciance and bonhomie. At one point I look up to the main guy and notice he has a Mongrel Mob tattoo on his chest. At lunch, they reassure Harry that, if his anklet is one of the green ones, it should withstand all the water.

Then comes news that the trailers are on their way. There is a flurry of activity outside to get the bottles into the bins. The piles disappear like a time-lapse. Two human chains reduce the cases and bottles on the mound to nothing but dismembered boxes. It happens in a blink.

At lunch, a car shows up and, out of the boot a seemingly endless supply of sandwiches – crafted from a chopping board and piles of raw materials – are handed out to anyone who shows an interest. The next day, it’s Tim, from Aquiferra Olive Oil who cooks sausages and bacon from a gas barbeque in the tray of his ute. Hands are washed, food is eaten, water bottles are unscrewed by the tips of fingers.

It’s now, when coming together for kai, that one realises that help takes many forms.

I do, though, try to bear one thing in mind. It is the constant reminder that, in the event of loss of cabin pressure, when the masks fall, you should look after your own mask before helping another with theirs.

The reason, I think, we are relentlessly reminded of this as the airplane taxies to the runway, is because it’s against our very nature to do this in a crisis. I believe we naturally gravitate towards wanting to help each other as best we can. I saw nothing to diminish that thought in late February in Hawke’s Bay.

Oliver Styles is a journalist, winemaker and cofounder of Halcyon Wines in Hawke’s Bay.