My green hiking backpack is lying on the floor. Inside, just some old t-shirts, comfy clothes and boots. All I need for two weeks of harvest. I leave Hong Kong and go down under. More precisely I am headed to the Adelaide Hills, a rugged, beautiful area east of Adelaide, and one of the largest geographical wine regions in Australia, very diverse in terms of climate, soil and topography. And the Country’s cradle of natural wine.

I am spending the next two weeks at Commune of Buttons, a wine project in the Basket Range, where siblings Jasper and Sophie are custodians of a 70 acres property. 

On my way to the Hills, outside the car window a sea of green hills rolls and stretches to the horizon, until the forest and the vineyards become one. Here, kangaroos and koalas roam free. While I pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming, I am suddenly thrown off by the Aussie slang, which makes me feel like I don’t know english at all. Before the harvest starts, I need to quickly pick up wine terms - like snips, forklift, pipe, squeegee (Australians do have strange names for things), hose, press, pump.

The first day I am up bright early and get to know the other members of the team, aka my little family for the next couple of weeks. We chat with the winemaker about the schedule as we are all ready to get things rolling. You can feel the excitement in everyone’s voice. 

‘Today we clean everything’ the winemaker says, in a solemn voice. 

‘What do you mean, we clean everything?!’ I think to myself, having a déjà vu back to the times when I was a kid and my mum would take spring cleaning a bit too far.

We proceed down to the winery, where all the vats, pumps and presses are. We move everything, taking some of the equipment outside and we get assigned one piece each. We then grab sponges, big buckets of water and we start cleaning. The whole day is about rinsing, scrubbing, washing, polishing. Every single piece of equipment and little corner of the winery. Fingers wrinkled like an old prune.

Being deprived of any manipulation whatsoever, and using minimal intervention, both in the vineyards and in the winery, I soon realise that, in natural wine, cleanliness is priority number one. And as many winemakers would tell you: natural wine is 90% cleaning and 10% everything else. And my wrinkled fingers can tell you that! 

Anyway, this was just a taste. Two days from now, some of the grapes will be ripe enough to be picked, and the real harvest experience I’ve imagined will start. We get to go into the vineyards, see grapes, get our hands dirty. This bucolic dream I pictured in my head is soon crushed by a 5am alarm. Outside is still pitch black and the silence wraps everything, like a blanket.

In the kitchen downstairs, breakfast happens in silence. Some of us staring into the mug of steaming coffee and others into the void, questioning our existence that early in the morning. In the garden, a bunch of pink cockatoos fly everywhere and screech, reminding you that you’re awake. 

Once the coffee and sugars kick in,  we hop in the car and get to the first vineyard site, the one that’s ready to be picked. The crisp air of the morning fills my lungs. Ten minutes into picking and everyone is already in the thick of it, while the first lights appear at dusk. 

Picking could easily be the speed dating of the countryside - you usually pick in pairs, one on the right side one the left - talking fast getting to know each other. Then, onto the next row, with a new picking partner. And so on, for hours.

We snip the grapes from their branches, fast, having a look if they’re healthy, and if they show any disease we get rid of them. In natural wine, where everything is picked and sorted by hand, this is a crucial moment. Making natural wine is unforgiving and it requires a bigger amount of work and care than conventional wine.

‘It’s time for smoko’. Probably the best discovery I’ve made in Australia this time around, smoko is the break between work in the morning - originally to allow time for workers to smoke tobacco, get food or drinks. This easily becomes lunch, simply because you eat so much you don’t need another meal. I grab a mug, a plate, some food, pour myself some coffee and I go seat down, while looking at the vineyards waking up under the rays of sun that is now well up in the sky. Mesmerising! 

We finish picking what’s left on the vines. Depending on the site, ripeness of the grapes and how big is the picking team, this can go on until early afternoon, to then go back to the Cellar and take care of the grapes you just picked. We weigh them, sometimes we put them in refrigerated containers, sometimes we sort them right away and press them. And before you know it, the clock hits (around, if you’re lucky) 8pm. Time for dinner.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so satisfied with food like I was during harvest. And there’s always wine around. A bottle from the winemaker, another from his private cellar, another from your friend, another you just bought at the shop a couple of days before. At the table, glass by glass, we exchange our life stories.

After listening to numerous anecdotes and doing another quick run down to the winery to finish and clean the press, it's time to go to bed. My shoulders are sore, my feet cold and my back screams but, somehow, there’s a certain excitement to wake up the next day and do it all over again.