Dan Barker is still thrilled to get out early sauvignon blanc.
When April rolls around New Zealand's hop growers hang up their hats, dust the leaves off their overalls and prepare the harvesters for another season.
Hops are the essential ingredient that gives beer its bitter taste and they grow magnificently in Nelson, now one of the world's most desirable hop-growing regions.
The hop vine produces small blooms that mature into strobiles, or little green cones. Unlike grapes or apples, which are also harvested at this time, hop harvesting is done by cutting the entire vine at the root. The cones are picked off and dried in kilns before being pressed or pelleted and packaged.
New Zealand's grape harvest usually begins in mid-March and lasts for six weeks, but changes in our climate have put paid to any sort of traditional planning - growers in the Far North were bringing grapes in as far back as January.
Our cider producers are in full swing harvesting in the apple orchards, all hoping to bring in apples with just the right amount of sweetness, tartness and tannin for texture. Some producers use traditional cider apples such as kingston black, yarlington mill, broxwood foxwhelp, chisel jersey and knotted kernel, yet Tim Knowell-Usticke from St Andrews Cider in Hawke's Bay reckons good old granny smiths are perfect for the job too.
Turning again to grapes, it can be tricky to send press information on April 1.
When the headline "Hawke's Bay Releases Nation's First 2014 Sauvignon Blanc" dropped into my inbox from the team at Moana Park wines on that day, I immediately thought "good prank", because there are quite a few processes grapes have to go through before they end up in a finished bottle of wine.
With the main harvest starting in Hawke's Bay in mid-March, no way could the wine be ready to drink by April 1. So I put the Moana Park information press on my website, tweeted, Facebooked and did all the usual social media malarkey as a bit of a giggle. Twelve hours later I took it down and wondered if anyone out there in the press would take it seriously.
The next morning I received an email from Moana Park saying that it was all true. The wine is 100 per cent real; the grapes were picked in the first week of March, and the juice was pushed through its processes in just four weeks as opposed to the usual minimum of four months. It's believed to be the first sauvignon blanc from the season and it's released under their Crush Pad label. They just made a mistake of announcing it on April 1.
The Moana Park winery site says owner Dan Barker is pleased that Crush Pad is the first on the shelf and is "pumped" about the quality of this year's harvest. "The harvest has come on several weeks early for us here in Hawke's Bay on the back of a moderate, steadfast summer."
Rainfall in the region has been sparse with Moana Park recording only 70mm of rainfall for the season thus far.
"It's a recipe for amazing wine, and we are licking our lips for what's to come in the remainder of the season."
The winery, which made nationwide news last year when it lost $165,000 of merlot dumped on the ground by vandals, appears to have left its trials behind with this early sauvignon. In terms of the rapid winemaking, Barker says that "young, vibrant wines are what Crush Pad is all about. While we love creating seriously fine wines at the super premium level, we also like to have a bit of fun.
"With Crush Pad we wanted to prove that it's possible to crush grapes straight off the pad and have them fresh, fruity and ready for the drinking within a matter of weeks, while still meeting the strict quality and natural winemaking measures we impose on ourselves. That's what Crush Pad is all about, and it's been a lot of fun to make."
I have not tried the wine as yet - but as for where to get a taste, this year's sauvignon blanc will filter out over the coming weeks, and people who are after the season's first drop are encouraged to check online at crushpad.co.nz for their list of stockists.