NEWSLETTERS | Classic Clippings

Flowering 1996

THE RETURN OF THE LERNAEAN HYDRA

Mythology would have us believe that Heracles despatched this terrible monster as the second of his famous labours. The Hydra had a dog-like body, and numerous serpentine heads, one of which was immortal. It was such a toxic creature that its breath and even the smell of its tracks were fatal. When Heracles smashed any of the heads with his club, the Hydra immediately sprouted another two or three.

Some say that the Hydra had ten thousand heads. Heracles succeeded by using fire-brands to sear the wound as each head was gone. The immortal head, still seething, was buried. Did Heracles cauterise the immortal head? I suspect not.

The Hydra is back, and its terrible hissing heads, more numerous with each year, has emerged from its unfathomable brown swamp, consuming many and putting fear into all, for none can escape it.

The twentieth-century Hydra is the bureaucracy, and its venomous heads are the ever-increasing and complex requirements of levies, licences, returns, and more bloody forms to be filled out.

The most recent and vile sprouting of this monster is destined to have serious and long-lasting effects on the wine business of the Clare Valley.

Effectively, it has put the screws on further vineyard development in most of the Clare Valley.

What the Hydra has done, is to claim title to the rain the falls out of the sky, and then dictate to the poor vignerons how much water they can take out of their own dams to water the vines.

These once proud Clare Valley cultivators of the vine are powerless against this demoniacal force. Now they watch in dismay as their dam overflows gush with Zeus' abundance which washes away to Posiedon's realm.

Last time it was the goddess (of wisdom), Athena, who helped Heracles grapple with the Hydra. This time the monster has invoked the wrath of Dionysus, our much loved god of wine.