So Paul, tell me about your background, what brought you to winemaking and a little bit about your career development?
It's been a while now, almost 30 years in the wine industry, I don’t come from a wine family or anything. I grew up on the North Shore of Auckland. I originally wanted to be a marine biologist. That was my undergrad degree. I started at Auckland University and discovered after about two years doing that that there were likely no jobs in marine biology. I started looking for other avenues that interested me. Luckily, between my second and third year, I walked into a local liquor shop, the Robbie Burns in Glenfield, asking for a summer job. They gave me a job. They needed people to help over the summertime and they get really busy. The boss there, Murray Belcher, was a fantastic guy. Really loved wine. A couple of people there were also into wine. Although the store wasn’t renowned for wine, they did have a lot of wine on the shelf. He saw me start taking an interest in wine and he would give me bottles of wine to take home, which for a university student, is always great. Much enjoyed. And he’d take me to tastings. He sowed the seed basically and passed that passion for wine on. And so, I knew I wasn't going to get a job in marine biology, and a future in that didn't really interest me anymore. As that light faded, the wine light started growing brighter. So I wrote off to every winery in NZ, I think, which would have been about 170 letters back then, asking for a harvest job. And got one in the Waikato with De Redcliffe, a little winery, which was part of the Hotel du Vin complex. It had a hotel restaurant on site and a little winery that got a few grapes from the Waikato and a lot from the Hawkes Bay. Sort of a tourism winery more than anything.
So, I got my first job in the wine industry there. That was the 97 harvest. Again, I was really very fortunate that the guys I worked with there were fantastic. Mark Compton was the winemaker, a very experienced winemaker. Daryl Soljans was the assistant wine maker and there was me, so really small. It was extremely busy through harvest, and I got to do everything, cleaning the press, punch downs, sampling, lab work, which was a great introduction to the wine industry. And I was just hooked from that point on We’d have a few nice bottles of wine, and I knew that was what I wanted to do from that point on. I remember I went 18 hours on my birthday: we started at 7:00 in the morning and went to 01.00 the next morning. And so, after talking to a few people - the route to becoming a wine maker is getting experience. From there I went and did a vintage in California, got a great job with a really, really, good winery in Sonoma. Doing top end Chardonnay and Merlot. Small company, family owned. Very enthusiastic people who worked there and again got to try some really nice wines while I was there, with the owners. They kept me on for five months, which is longer than the average stint as well, so I managed to save a bit of money. And then I came back to New Zealand, got a job at Villa Maria up in Auckland and was very fortunate that they kept me on full time after harvest.
Villa at the time was a really good place to work. Just getting into Pinot at that stage in the late 90s. Great bunch of people. A lot of cellar-hands have gone on to be winemakers elsewhere as well. It was a great, virtual apprenticeship at Villa, my two years there. You learned how to make wine; you really learn the practical side of things. Not so much the theory, but the practical details of winemaking. You can know all the theory in the world, but if you don't know how to operate a pump or do all these things - Villa was great for teaching you that. They were pushing themselves to make better wine all the time. And obviously at Esk Valley and Vidal as well. There was a good knowledge base within that whole company, a really good bunch, and today, I still have a lot of good friends from that group.
I ended up working two whole years there, the 98 and 99 harvest, and at that point I knew I wanted to be a wine maker, but I didn't have qualifications. So I went back to university, down to Lincoln to do the post grad winemaking, viticulture and oenology one year course there. I worked harder in that one year than I did in my three years as an undergrad, because I really wanted it and I got the qualification, got what I wanted out of that course.
Leading into why I'm here in Martinborough, at that first job at Robbie Burns, one of the first tastings I went to was a Martinborough Wines tasting, hosted by Larry McKenna and I remember tasting those wines and thinking, wow, those are special wines! Larry’s wines were just revolutionary and setting the benchmark for what Martinborough and New Zealand could do. Those wines stayed with me and set the seed for me in terms of wanting to get into Pinot and get to Martinborough. Then the opportunity came up to move here in early 2004, and I jumped at it.
And the rest is history! You moved on after all those years making wine at Martinborough Vineyard to the Winemaker role with Nga Waka late last year. What was the appeal?
I wanted to challenge myself really. Nga Waka is a really good brand. Got a lot of good vineyards around Martinborough, a lot more terrace. A lot of good sites which really excites me in terms of that single vineyard potential. Small company, family owned. The owners Jay and Peg are awesome. In my first meetings with them, it was just a natural fit, I thought. I've been 20 years at Martinborough Vineyard, that was long enough. I felt like I’d achieved everything I wanted to achieve there. I didn't want to get to 60 and realise I’ve only ever worked in one place my whole life so. I did 20 years at Martinborough Vineyard, and if I get 20 years here, I'll be a happy man.
You've brought a strong personal legacy from Martinborough Vineyard, but you're coming into a role where the previous winemaker, Roger Parkinson both founded the business and has made every wine since its inception until the last vintage. So how do you respect his legacy and at the same time bring your own individual style and ideas to it.
Interesting point. I've had a lot of people in the last six months, who knew I was coming to Nga Waka tell me how much they loved Nga Waka Chardonnay. You sort of think, ‘Are you telling me how much you love it because you don’t want me to change it?’ Like, ‘don’t muck it up Paul?’ No, Mick, Jay and Peggy have employed me because they want me to make my wines - because I've got a good track record making top end Chardonnay and Pinot. So it is about me putting my stamp on it. And I think Roger and I probably have similar philosophies, respecting the vineyards. The vineyards are the same, it’s just the winemaker who is changing.
And it's a gradual thing. It’s the same when I started at Martinborough Vineyard and was taking over from Claire Mulholland, who made some great wines in her time there. And then she had the same thing when she took over from Larry McKenna. You are always going to take over from someone. And it's up to you to put your stamp on it and make it yours. And yes, the exciting thing about here is I have that opportunity,
Great! So tell us about some of the developments you are already thinking about. For example, I know that you were looking at more diversity in the oak barrels.
Yes, Roger loved Cadus barrels! At Martinborough Vineyard we had our own oak programme and it gave me the chance to try different coopers and see what did and didn’t work. I’m a big believer in some diversity in oak to make more complex wines and fit different sites and varieties better. So that's an obvious one. But I think there's a lot of one percenters and it's the accumulation of those one percenters. If I change 100 things by 1%, then that’ll make a noticeable difference to the end wines.
Give me a couple of examples…
Well, I think it's even getting back to the vineyard, which is a key point. We've gone through the Home Block, which sits in front here, we’ve hand leaf-plucked that for the first time. Which I think is a massive thing, especially for Chardonnay, in terms of getting the right fruit exposure. Getting in there, doing that by hand rather than just relying on machine, done that on both the Chardonnay and Pinot here and a couple of our other top blocks. We've gone through and green thinned a lot harder than I think they have in the previous vintages here. So those are the initial changes. We’ll handpick this (Home Block) in the coming days as well, which I'm really looking forward to in terms of style of Chardonnay that I like, and introducing a bit more whole bunch pressing. That’s probably a good starting point, but it won’t all happen overnight. But it will happen.
2024 is an exceptional vintage. Roger started the wines, but you'll make the final selections and blends. So what do you see as the highlights for the customers to look forward to.
Yeah, it's a great vintage 24. As I said to Roger actually, on his leaving, it's a good vintage to leave on and it's a good finish to start on too. From my point of view, it was one of the easiest vintages I’ve done, and I think the easier vintages are the best vintages, because there’s less input from the winemaker. The season was just a dream season. Slightly lower crops, great weather right throughout, just enough rain, delivered a really concentrated, balanced crop at harvest time. And tasting through all the barrels the other day with you and the crew, I think the Pinots are exceptional. Great depth to them. A really nice cross between 20 and 21. I think we've got the depth of the 21s but also the drinkability of the 20s. There's an approachability to those wines early on, but they're also wines that have some good underlying structure that will make them age really well. It's exciting to be blending them up now before vintage and will then be good to get them in bottle and tucked away.
Great! And Nga Waka recently acquired another vineyard on Hinakura Road. What will that bring to the current line up?
It's a big Sauvignon Blanc block, so it will bring more Sauvignon into the range. It is currently contracted to another winery for the next couple of years so there's not much at the moment that will impact our winery, but it’s a really good Sauvignon block, highly regarded by other winemakers that have dealt with it. But at the moment we're under contract elsewhere. So hopefully cash flow from that pays for a few things.
Right. You mentioned before earlier harvests, and of course global warming is a recurrent theme now with earlier budding as well as earlier harvests. What challenges do you see for Nga Waka and Martinborough going forward, what developments do you think vineyards will be forced to take on?
Yes. You can look at, in the current day what are the issues now, and then what effect it carries on, where are we going to be in 30 years’ time?
Frost exposures obviously being one
Oh yeah, but it was frosty in the 90s. It was frosty before then. It’s still frosty now. I guess we're getting earlier and earlier bud burst. So any spring frost especially through that late August, September, October period can be challenging. And we had a frost in early November this year which was a long night. It’s certainly brought harvest forward from what it used to be. When I arrived to Martinborough 20 years ago, harvest always started around last week of March and went through April typically. Nowadays the new normal seems to be starting second week in March, finishing by first week of April, so it's coming forward a good 2 if not 3 weeks. A bit more warmth is not a bad thing for Martinborough. We’re not getting the really cold, cold vintages like 30-40 years ago. When you look back in the last 10 years, we've probably had a fairly good run. And then also it might provide the opportunities for other varieties down the tracks. Syrah was one I was getting into at Martinborough Vineyard quite a bit and I believe that’s got a huge future in Martinborough in the long term. Certainly, as we get earlier vintages and. warmer, or more growing degree day years.
I'll put my money on Syrah. It’s a really good variety for New Zealand and cool climate Syrah is quite distinctive, I think as well. It can be a Martinborough style that could shine and be a nice addition to a cellar door where you’ve got Pinots all round town. Throw a Syrah in there with a bit more body and depth to it.
That’s interesting. I went to a vertical of Dry River Pinot Noir and Syrah a few years back with Geoff Kelly. Some quite old wines and that was when Neil had the reflective mulch under the vines, of course, and I think the consensus was that while the Pinot Noirs were good, the Syrahs had stood up better.
Yes. I think out of all his wines the Syrah was one of my favourites back from the earlier days. And the Gewürztraminer, I was a massive fan of that one also. I think that some of his winemaking and viticultural processes lent themselves probably more to Syrah than the Pinot.
Well, today it's a tough time for the wine business. Younger generations are not only drinking other things like craft beer instead of wine. They’re also reputedly drinking less overall. And on top of that, we've got the dire and arguably, not based on evidence, pronouncements from WHO about no safe level of alcohol consumption, which we're seeing reflected in health warnings from various governments. What do you see as the future of the industry, especially for Martinborough and where do you think the industry here needs to focus in terms of market share?
Yes, really relevant points and what I see for Martinborough right now is we have to be producing top quality, high end, reserve quality wines. And then getting into discovering the sites a bit more, I think as well. You know, the differences we have within Martinborough and marketing them as single vineyard or unique wines. To me Martinborough has no future in bulk wine, The problems with the New Zealand wine industry at the moment are at the base of the pyramid. Martinborough has to focus on the top of it. And that to me, is what’s exciting about here. At Nga Waka we’ve got 7 sites within Martinborough, all slightly different, so hopefully down the track we can start making a few more single vineyard wines. Releasing them and showing people, not only the strength of Martinborough, but the diversity as well. Martinborough is such a small region as well. You do have to keep that in mind. Just 1% of New Zealand's wine production here, so we're never going to compete in that bulk market. The more we focus on that top end Pinot, Chardonnay, even Sauvignon Blanc! We could become great top end Sauvignon Blanc producers and differentiate ourselves from other parts of New Zealand. There's a huge opportunity there. How we do that, that's the tough one, certainly I’m no marketing expert. I was having a good chat with someone about it actually, and we were talking a lot about social media and stuff like that. I think what Martinborough does, we’re great at growing grapes and making great wine, but our marketing is pretty average. Telling the story, they talk about content creation and stuff like that. And we probably need to get into doing a little bit more of that, with more people, telling more of the story of Martinborough. It's a small little village tucked away on a small island in the bottom corner of the world, but through social media or whatever other platforms, there should be ways where you can open the door, so people around the world can see what Martinborough is doing.
Paul, I’m excited to see what’s ahead for you, Nga Waka and Martinborough and I wish you well! I agree there is huge opportunity, and it was certainly exciting tasting those barrel samples and seeing the concentration of those Pinots particularly, and the further development potential for the Chardonnays.
It’s exciting from my point of view to start with such a great vintage potentially, 2025 is shaping up very well.
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