Surreal. That’s the word many winemakers use about lockdown, a stark new reality that defined 2020: the year that Covid-19 struck.
‘It was like floating in a bubble – your world feels undone, uncoupled’, is how California- based flying winemaker Paul Hobbs describes it. Given the unfolding pandemic and mounting death toll, some even started to question their profession. ‘Working in a winery felt perverse, almost devoid of reason at times,’ recalls winemaker and writer Oliver Styles in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.
When things kicked off, harvest was underway in the southern hemisphere. Most governments deemed wine an ‘essential business’, thus exempt from shutting down. An historically early vintage in areas including South America proved a godsend logistically, as fruit was already largely in wineries come the start of lockdown.