At 5.30pm on New Year’s Eve, a riot broke out at BW, the campground associated with New Zealand’s biggest New Year’s festival, Rhythm and Vines. The details, which soon made international headlines, are well known: 63 arrests, 83 injured, full cans of alcohol thrown, vehicles overturned, tents burned. Meanwhile, 11 kilometres away at Waiohika Estate vineyard, a crowd of 18,500 flocked to Rhythm and Vines to see in the New Year, where the biggest issue for festivalgoers was a spot of rain in the wee hours of 2015.
Since being founded in 2003 by three Otago University students, Rhythm and Vines has become something of a rite of passage for high school leavers and a first taste of freedom for those with freshly minted 18+ cards. As such, the festival has gained notoriety over the years for punters’ drunken antics, the most infamous of which are shared with the 22,000 fans of the ‘Rhythm and Vines Legends’ Facebook page.
Intrigued to know whether the R&V legend was all it was cracked up to be, The Wireless headed along to the three day festival to hear from the artists, organisers, and revelers themselves.
More R&V videos from Ollie Neas and Molly Mccarthy:
Broods / Zane Lowe / MØ
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