“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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24 June 2017

BIO-D HUT OPENS AT GEMTREE

My camera is full of Big Wine Men this week ... this is Mike Brown, introducing Leon Bignell, the Minister for Agriculture and Tourism and other tricky things at the opening of the Gemtree Biodynamic Hut at the Gemtree tasting room in McLaren Vale last night. 

'Biggles' helped secure a modest government 1:1 grant to assist Gemtree build this neat little garden and display room to make simple practical sense of the biodynamic vineyard cycle. 

Kids seem to love it, which is a good start.

They can learn biodynamics while Mum and Dad taste some.

Of course the Gemtree mob made the Minister stack a cow horn with cow shit.

"This shit's not fresh," he said with a grin, massaging it in. 

"This shit's cold. It's not warm enough to be fresh."

Bignell grew up on a dairy farm. He can handle shit.

Gemtree was amongst the first of McLaren Vale vignerons to begin converting bits of its vineyard holdings to biodynamic management. Their adjacent reforested wetland on the piedmont is an exemplary commitment to the local ecology. FROGS!!!

From little things, big things grow.These folks were in at the start.

photos Philip White

2 comments:

scared said...

is that Baba Yaga with Biggles whitey?

Philip White said...

Considering Baba Yaga had to carry her little hut around on her chicken legs, I doubt that she would have built it from Willunga Slate, as the kids and crew at Gemtree did. But maybe them mighty Mike Brown gams could do it!