Roger Moroney: Raise your glass to teenage Tom

Imagine, taking the reins of a vineyard while still a teenager.
When a bloke called Tom McDonald took over a vineyard in the 1920s he was in his teenage years - at an age where I was still learning how to fall off motorcycles and only read the paper to see what was on telly that night.
But this remarkable chap, now immortalised through a premium red wine which bears the simple title of Tom, was so devoted to the science and art of winemaking he ignored the impetuosity of youth and created a legend.
He became known as the father of red wine in New Zealand.
The whole Tom McDonald story fascinated me as I listened to Church Road Winery's winemaker Chris Scott telling me, and other curious underground wanderers, all about him.
Then it occurred to me ... the bloke was running a vineyard despite being under age. Had he dared venture into a bar to order a glass of one of his wines he would have been told "get out sonny ... come back when you're 21."
And legally, he wasn't allowed to drink the stuff even on the vineyard premises.
True enough, Chris said, but added that Tom's mum and dad were effectively his overseers ... they signed whatever appropriate forms were required for him.
Because he was too young. Fascinating.
We're lucky here in the Bay because the region is a bright beacon on the winemaking landscape and that means an equally bright, and colourful, history.
Oh yes, the wines produced today are often exceptional. They win awards here, there and everywhere.
Our reds are being likened to the finest Bordeaux and they give the much vaunted Australian Shiraz efforts a real run. Our chardonnays ... the best.
But as Chris explained, it wasn't always that way.
In the early years it was volume, volume, volume as well as location, location, location.
The basically fledgling wineries would crush up a few tonnes of grapes, fill up half a huge vat of the results and let it do its fermentation thing. Then, when it was looking pretty good top the lot up with water to double the volume.
People still do that today of course ... but only after raiding a bottle of someone else's wine in the fridge and topping up the missing content with a dash of tap water.
I like the whole history of it all.
The priests who planted and cultivated and picked the vines along at the Mission.
The colourful pioneers, from the other side of the world, who discovered the soils around these parts were pretty good.
I remembered how Glenvale, in the 60s, produced things like the terrifying blackberry nip ... and I've got an unopened bottle of Cold Duck at home which is more than 40 years old.
I shan't ever open it as the cleaning fluids sold today are perfectly sufficient to get stains off.
The wine thing is like Art Deco.
When architects and then builders created a new central city in Napier after the 1931 quake it was just ... a new central city.
Only many decades later did these old but distinctive buildings persuade people to come here from all over the land, and beyond, to gaze in admiration at them.
Oh, and spend their dosh while they're here.
Blokes like Tom McDonald and other pioneers of the grape never figured on creating anything more than ... well, wine.
But standing beneath ground level at Church Road, in a series of echoing dungeon-like rooms with sparkling walls still crusted with tartaric acid crystals from when they were massive concrete wine vats, you get to realise there is more colour to the Bay's terrific red and whites than just ... red and white.
Blokes like Tom started more than an industry of just bottling the fruit of the grape. They started an INDUSTRY.
World class wines, tourism, entertainment, hospitality, food, and employment ... and quite a bit of fun too.
Over the past decade wineries have discovered their fields of grapes can also be adapted into fields of entertainment gold. The concerts and festivals and even alfresco film evenings emerged.
Today I guess it's taken for granted every summer we're going to get four or five major acts capable of drawing 5000-plus people.
That's impressive, because in the past it was down to heading for a main centre to see such acts ... as we had nowhere to stage them. Now we have. Natural amphitheatre vineyards.
On the hillside of the Mission people saw Sting and last Saturday night Church Road produced a magnificent evening with Crowded House.
I sat, enjoyed and raised a toast, fittingly with a red drop in hand ... to Tom. Good on ya mate.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.