Power and Agency

Your Role at this Time of Need.

I don’t really know how to be anything else other than a winemaker.

And at this time of year, winemaking is a 14 hour a day job.

There’s a whole lot of winemakers currently harvesting grapes, pressing and processing and doing our best to make the very best wine we can.

The onset of the corona virus pandemic clearly doesn’t help me or any winemaker get through this demanding time of year any easier.

But I’m not complaining, just observing. I think all of us no matter our profession, have come to the conclusion that it is what it is and there are a whole lot of factors that are clearly out of our control.

Yet there are some things that are very much in our control. They have been in our control for sometime however, I guess it’s times like this that make us reconnect with what truly is important, and understand what power we have in the choices we make.

Choosing to keep our loved ones safe, to stay at home, to clean our hands regularly and properly, and choosing to minimise any risk to ourselves and others are really powerful choices.

And choosing to find new ways to use our time, to reconnect with each other online or by phone, to make some sacrifices to our freedom and where we can to provide care, charity and good will to others who might be doing it tougher than us, can also be very powerful choices.

This time will also make us very decisive about where and how we spend our money. Rather than living in the moment, casually buying whatever we fancy and not thinking twice about it; we’re faced with a very uncertain tomorrow, which makes every decision we make so much more important today.

You will hear many calls for you to support your local community and local businesses. The decision about where you spend each dollar really does count. It always has. You’ve had the agency and power to truly make a difference to the amount of cash, jobs, services and production in the local economy around you since you earned your first dollar.

But never has it meant so much than it does now.

I am not making the choice to stay home tomorrow. Like I did today, I’ll be making sure I get the grapes off the vines and into the winery and I’ll be checking ferments and working the tanks, barrels, vats and hoses like I have for the past four weeks. I’m afraid corona virus is not going to keep me isolated until all my wine is in tank, because this is the only time of year I have to make, create and achieve my livelihood.

But all the intense vintage work me and my team are doing (at safe distances) could be for nought, if you choose to spend your money on imported wine over coming weeks.

In fact, the truly magnificent Australian grown and made wine industry could be at real risk if we don’t all choose to buy local and keep our cash at home in our local and regional economies.

As we’ve seen with the hospitality industry, this pandemic is going to hit our economy and our friends and family hard, far and wide.

All I ask is you give some real thought to where you choose to spend your money during this crisis and do what you can to help a mate, a friend of a friend, a family member or someone you may have only heard about through your choice to buy local, buy Victorian, buy Australian and buy with real agency.

You are more powerful than you may think.