Watson, Neil Edward & Anne Margaret Interview

Today is the 26th September 2017. I’m interviewing Neil and Anne Watson of Havelock North on their families. Neil, would you like to start off by telling us something about your family?

Yeah, thank you. First of all I’m a true blue Hawke’s Bay-ite. I was born in 1950 at the Hastings Memorial Hospital and I’ve lived here all my life. My father, John Douglas Watson – he was also born here in Hawke’s Bay. My grandfather, Ted Watson – he was a builder, and we just … was he born here, Anne, or not?

Anne: He was born in Oamaru.

Neil: He was born in Oamaru. Since we’ve been retired, Anne’s doing our family tree and we’re just finding everything out. But Nana and Pop – they always lived … first of all they lived in the Mangateretere area; they lived out at Watson Road. And that’s what Watson Road was named after – Nana and Pop – ‘cause they were the only Pakehas there; the other families were Māoris, so that’s where Watson Road came from. So they were there.

Then Dad was a Hawke’s Bay fellow; Mum come [came] from Pahiatua, from a farming family, so that’s where I’ve got the farming bit in me. And you know, to cut a long story, I was born in 1950 as I just said. I had no idea at the time just what the War years had done to people – the First World War, the Depression, and Second World War – just how that had moulded people. But, as I say, born in 1950 and grew up in the fifties. And I vividly remember Dad digging vegetable gardens, and we had potato patches, and we had everything in our garden in Allerton Street, ‘cause that’s how we survived. There was no supermarkets; there was no … shopping was closed on weekends and so forth, and that’s the way we lived. Everybody had a vegetable garden, and in those days if the next-door neighbour had too many cabbages and we had too many carrots, we could just swap and away we went; and that’s how we survived.

So which school did you go to?

The first year, in 1955, the first year I went to Primary School I went to St Joseph’s Catholic School in Eastbourne Street. And I vividly remember, you know, a few days before going to school, Mum sort of put me in the little car we had there, and she says, “Neil, you go out of Allerton Street; you go straight up Heretaunga Street, cross the railway lines, go to the Municipal Building, turn right and then turn left, and there’s your school. So as a five-year-old, I biked right through Heretaunga Street to school. [Chuckle] So we did that for one year, and that’s where I went and met John Caulton very well; I’d know John to this day. And we’d stop at Rush Munros for ice creams all the time, and we had a ball up and down there. But that’s, as I say, as a five-year-old.

This was young John Caulton​, wasn’t it?

Yeah, young John, yeah.

‘Cause there’s three John Caultons.

Yeah. Mr Caulton – he just died not very long ago. But no, John’s a wood merchant round here, and we run into each other and we talk about the old times. Yeah – have a good old yack all the time. So that was in 1955; and then in 1956 the St Mary’s Primary School opened up in Frederick Street. St John’s College transferred from Frederick Street to Jervois Street – the secondary school. And St Mary’s came along, so I spent all the rest of my primary years at St Mary’s and then went to St John’s College in the early 1960s. And so I was brought up in a Catholic environment – all the education was Catholic. Mum was staunch Catholic; Dad was a little bit easier sometimes, but – yeah, that’s where we were. So all my schooling was here locally.

I thoroughly enjoyed sports, and some days I just went to school to eat my lunch, I must admit. I’ve always been somebody who likes doing things rather than doing the academic side of things, and that’s just me. And it was that grounding that I had during the fifties and early sixties of growing things at home with Dad that just led me on to where I went. I’ve got the passion for growing things, and I’ve done it all my life.

Well just going back a few steps … brothers and sisters?

Yep – there’s four of us in total. First of all, my father and my uncle were brothers, and my mother and my aunty were sisters. And we lived in Allerton Street at the time about three houses apart. Uncle Bernie and Auntie Joyce had six kids, and Mum and Dad had four kids, so it was like a family of ten. And to this day we all get on.

That’s quite unique actually.

Yeah. And we all get on like a house on fire to this day. So as far as we’re concerned, I’m the eldest of four; I’ve got brother John and brother Patrick, and they’re both alive and living round here; and sister Susan – she lives in Brisbane. Yeah. But as I say there’s ten of us; we all grew up together and we’re still good friends to this day.

And sports?

Sports – well in those days when I was growing up it was either rugby in the winter time – there wasn’t much else, choice; and there was either athletics or cricket in the summer time. And I chose athletics ‘cause I was [a] reasonable, good runner. And I did very well at the Hastings Athletic Sports Club, and I won several championships at the Secondary Schools’ Sports and so forth, over the hundred and two hundred metres. Did all that; thoroughly enjoyed that; met some magic people, and also keeping me fit for rugby for the winter months, so … yeah, they were my two sports.

But you know, that took us right through to … as I said earlier, I was more of a ‘get up and do it’ sort of a fellow rather than an academic, so by the time I was fifteen I had my School C [School Certificate] so I was out the door – see you later. And I was actually still fifteen when I left school. My sixteenth birthday was in February, so I was still actually fifteen when I went out.

In those days it was dead easy to get a job at the freezing works; went and got a job at Tomoana for about three months; absolutely hated it. Inside; dealing with people that didn’t care about things; just the culture – I just hated it. So didn’t last long there at all. And Mum said to me, “Well … Neil, unless you get a job you’re going back to school.”

So I soon got myself a job at New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation, better known as FruitFed these days. In those days it was the place to go to for all the orcharding families around Hawke’s Bay, on the Heretaunga Plains. And a joker by the name of John Bale – he was my first boss; there was another guy by the name of Alec King – he was there when I actually started, but he sort of retired only two or three months after I started. And then John Bale – he was the local manager, and he was also a rugby referee. And I was into rugby in those days, and he was very sports-minded and I was sports-minded, so we got along like a house on fire. And I soon learnt that … like in those days I didn’t have a car or anything … was always biking to work … and I soon learnt that it was easier to be five minutes early than five minutes late. So after a short period of time with always being the first one there, within six or seven months I had the key to the building and I opened it up every morning. And as a result I was allowed to go early and had training nights to go to rugby. And that’s how it worked out. So that was in 1965 I started there … started working my way through the ranks; it was mainly all the bookwork first … clerical. A joker by the name of Jim Waldron was very, very good to me; he taught me a lot.

And then in 1969 they asked me would I like to go to Massey to do some training there, ‘cause they wanted me to do other things. So I went off to Massey to do a Diploma in Horticulture, but I also played a lot of rugby when I was down there. And I met Anne, too, there. And I didn’t do as well as I should do [in] [chuckle] my Diploma, but I met Anne and I played rugby, so two out of three wasn’t bad. But I got all the basics. But you know, that was in 1970 and that’s where I met Anne, down at Massey.

Right. You were at Massey too?

Anne: Yes, I was there; I was doing a Bachelor of Arts.

So would you like to tell me something about your family now? Were you a Hawke’s Bay girl?

No. No, not at all. I’m from the South Island, and my family goes back to 1870s when they arrived in Canterbury. One part of the family was Scottish from the Isle of Skye, McLeods; and the other side, the Kellands – both farming backgrounds – the Kelland family came from Devon in England, and they actually had a very large farm there which was one of few farms on flat land. And they came out to New Zealand; it was a big family, and all of them were successful farmers. Of course the Scottish side – they came out because of the land clearance and things like that. And I believe my great-great grandfather didn’t speak a word of English; he could only speak Gaelic. But all his family did well as well. Some were in the Police and Education, but invariably ended up with farms as well.

So my parents lived in Timaru; that was where I was born, and when I was six years old we moved to Blenheim. My father worked for a stock and station firm. We were two years in Blenheim, and then to Nelson where he had a job in Levin and Co, which became Wrightson NMA. And then they transferred to Hamilton, but in between times most of my schooling in Nelson. But for some unknown reason I chose to go from Nelson to Palmerston North to Massey University, which was fortunate in a way because my parents transferred that same year to Hamilton. They of course wanted me to move to Waikato University, but by then I’d met Neil and I said I wasn’t going to, [chuckle] so I remained and got my degree at Massey. And then I did year … I was part of the first course at … Palmerston North Teachers’ College had a graduate course training for one year. And Neil and I got married in 1973 – January 1973 – and six weeks later I went to [chuckle] Palmerston North to live, and left him here ‘cause if I didn’t do my teaching training, I … you know, what was the point? So, Palmerston North Teachers’ College in those days didn’t send people up here for school practise, but they were kind to me and all of my school practise was done in local schools; it was very nice.

So I only taught for about eighteen months ‘cause I started at Ebbett Park School, and went to Mayfair; but by then we were expecting our first son, Blair. That was 1975, and we went on and had two more sons. And eventually I went back teaching – in 1985 I went back, ten years later. I had done a bit of relieving in between.

Where were you living at that stage?

In 1985?

Neil: Hunters Hill.

Anne: No, we hadn’t quite built Hunters Hill then – we had bought a section in Hunters Hill, Havelock North, and that part of the reason for me going back to work, ‘cause I wanted to build a new home. So at that time we were living in Caroline Road, near the Showgrounds. While the house was being built we lived at Te Awanga … yes, on the Te Awanga Vineyard. It was up for sale but luckily it didn’t sell while we were there.

Was that the one on the corner of Tukituki Road?

Neil: No, opposite the Haumoana School.

Anne: Parkhill Road.

‘Cause over the years that vineyard back in the forties was I think McWilliams, then it was all pulled out.

Neil: Yes, it was.

Jack McKeown used to manage it.

Yeah, that’s right.

Anne: Yes. So I went back to school; I taught for a short period of time at Heretaunga Intermediate, then went on to Havelock Intermediate for nearly nine years. And unfortunately we lost our son, so we had another child later, Brittany, who’s now twenty-three, and she’s away overseas at the moment. So when she was five I went teaching at Frimley School, and I was there until I retired.

So you’ve had a good mix of schools, haven’t you?

I have, yes. I relieve at St Mary’s School.

So Brittany – where is she?

She’s in Edinburgh, she’s doing her OE. [Overseas Experience] Hopefully she’ll be back by this time next year; she’s been away for fifteen months. She had lived a very sheltered life, and then [chuckle] took off, and she’s found it quite challenging but she stuck at it. She’s got the tenacity to dig in.

Who’s she like – which one of you?

She’s probably more like me. [Chuckle] The stubbornness comes from her father. [Chuckles]

And I remember when you tragically lost your boy …

Hadleigh.

What are the other two lads doing?

Blair’s in real estate; he is in Auckland. He went on and got a business degree at Waikato University, and he works at and partly owns Kelland’s Real Estate in Auckland, so it’s the family name again.

Was he married?

Blair’s married, and he has two little girls, Ivy and Lila. Ivy’s nearly six and Lila’s just turned three.

And his wife’s name?

Jackie – she’s from England; she’s English and she comes from the Sheffield area.

So a very international family …

Neil: Very …

Anne: It is … it is.

And the other boy?

Elliott. He qualified as a plumber, and he’s now a building inspector for the Hastings District Council.

Oh, right.

He went in as a very young building inspector – think he was thirty-two when he went. He’s now forty, so …

Neil: Time waits for nobody.

So now you’ve retired; do you have any other interests?

Well, I’ve got into this genealogy thing in February, and the bug has bitten. And it drives Neil mad at times, [chuckle] ‘cause I might be on the computer hours and hours of the day.

Okay. Well, we’ll move back to Neil, and pick up where you left off …

Neil: Yeah, well as I said, Anne and I met in 1970 at Massey. The course that I was doing was only a year course, and Anne was doing a degree so she was there for a total of three years plus the one year for her for her education … school teacher’s certificate.

So I was back here late ‘70, early ‘71, and that’s when New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation gave me a vehicle, and gave me a job as a sales rep; and started going round mainly all the pip and stone fruit orchards round the Heretaunga Plains. And that’s when I really started learning how the Heretaunga Plain works, with the aquifer; with the different soil types; with the different management styles – saw everything – how different farms were run, or orchards were run. Some were a family unit, some were business sort of units. And in hindsight, that was the best learning curve that I could’ve gone through, with what I’d learnt from my father – how to grow things – and then transferred that over into a commercial field, was just great. So that all happened; that was mainly in the very early seventies – ‘71, ‘72, pip and stone fruit.

And then about ‘73 I got called into the office one day, and [?] said, “Neil, viticulture’s beginning to take off round here, and there’s a few clients – would you like to look after them?” Well I couldn’t say “yes” quick enough. And there was only McWilliams; there was Vidal’s as far as the corporate structures, and then there was only five or six contract growers at that stage, so it was [a] very, very early stage.

But one of the rules was that I had to be in the office every Friday afternoon for a certain gentleman to come in, just to keep him up to date and so forth, what was going on round the place. And he told me a little bit, and that gentleman’s name was Tom McDonald. And I didn’t realise at the time just how big he was; you know, big …

You mean in stature?

No, [chuckle] well he was big in stature, but just big in the industry. His word was absolutely gospel. And you know, if he gave you a big wink, you knew you were in trouble, but if he just glared at you, you knew you were in big trouble. [Chuckle]

So that … [chuckle] I sort of learned in the end why it had to be a Friday afternoon; he had a beer with all his mates at the County Club at the same time, so he’d come to the FruitFed and he ordered what he needed for the week, and I had to make sure that it was delivered to the various vineyards. And he went off down to the Club, and away we went.

But it was through that I said, “Well okay – we’re growing these grapes, but”, I said, “they’ve got to be made into wine. Can you show me a little bit … you know, tell me a little bit how it all works?” So I was invited over there once or twice at vintage time, and showed the crushing process, and you know, some of the wine making process, and that’s where it all started growing. But I repeat – just going round all the various spots … like I was doing viticulture and horticulture at that time, and just going round all the various spots. And the Heretaunga Plains is quite a diverse place when you sort of get to know it on a fairly and different detail.

So then that just continued on. And at the time a chap by the name of Keith Crone – he used to be the vineyard supervisor for McWilliams – Keith had actually told me sometime in 1976 that he was going to pull the pin. And that made my ears jump up a little bit, because I was getting more and more interested in viticulture, and I wanted to do more my own thing – I wanted to do the actual growing rather than actual advising how to grow, you know – I was better at that.

So to cut a long story short, I got the word in February 1977 that Keith was going to pull the pin. He hadn’t even handed in his resignation at that time, but as soon as he did he told me. So I made a call to Bob Knappstein, who was the production manager at the time – I didn’t know Bob very well at all. And that was on a Tuesday, and it was just a verbal – there was no formal interview, no nothing, it was just over a phone call on a Tuesday, so … I said, “I know Keith’s chucking it in – I’m interested in the job.” “Oh, okay – we’ll keep you in mind.”

Well on the Thursday of that week I got the phone call back again, “When can you start?” [Chuckle] That’s how it happened. And it was through … Tom McDonald was definitely in the background, as to how I got the job.

So as soon as … Anne had known that I’d rung up on the Tuesday, but she didn’t know anything about the Thursday; so I just went home and said, “Well, I’ve chucked the job in at FruitFed, and [chuckles] I’m starting …” [Laughter]

Anne: Two small children, and he comes home and says he’s thrown his job in! [Chuckles]

Neil: So it was the 18th April 1977 that I started, so for a long time I never counted that as a vintage. But once the All Blacks started swapping players, and a player could get five minutes test time and call that a test, I started calling 1997 a vintage. And that was the first one. Yeah 1977, and it was mainly in the winery at that stage, just really understanding how the … getting the feel of how the winery worked. And as soon as vintage was over – at that stage I was still asked to report to Bob Knappstein every morning, so go over to Napier and report to him. But he was absolutely flat out doing all the wine making, and then ‘bout ten days after I started, says, “Neil, don’t come in here – just go out and do it.” And so that’s what I did … did it for the next thirty-nine vintages.

Bob and Tom were quite unique in their own ways.

Exactly. Exactly, yeah.

And they complemented one another.

Yep. So away we went, and as I say 1978 was my first vintage that I controlled things. And in those days McWilliams had vineyards from Bay View, Wharerangi, Taradale, Haumoana, Tukituki and Te Awanga. But in those days it was still all fortified wines which was running it. And as everybody knows, Tom McDonald – he always had a couple of blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon – one out at Tukituki and one at Taradale – and that was the basis of where his famous Cabernet Sauvignon wines came from.

But they also had two small blocks of Chardonnay, or Pinot Chardonnay as it was called in those days. One of the blocks was where the park is directly behind the Church Road Winery is today – there was a block of grapes on there. And the other block was over the hill at Wharerangi. I spoke with the foreman at Taradale Vineyard – joker by the name of Geoff Greasley – and Geoff was in charge of all the … he organised all the harvesting in those days, ‘cause it was hand harvested. And he said, “Well … they’re never going to make good wine out of it, Neil, because this block’s two weeks earlier than this one. Somehow we’ve got to get them closer together.”

And so it was through what I’d learnt in the orcharding game … in the pip fruit game … that you pull out all the centres of the trees and let the sunlight into them, and everything changed. So we leaf-plucked the vines at Wharerangi; and we also grape-thinned – we thinned grapes, and in those days it was unheard of, you know. And apple trees you thinned them, and plum trees you thinned them, but never thought they’d thin grape vines – you never did that in your life. So we leaf-plucked and we thinned Wharerangi, and all of a sudden the two come together. We harvested them on the same day; very very similar. In they went, and Bob Knappstein went on to make a champion Pinot Chardonnay out of it. And that was the first time that that was a change from hybrid grapes to … it’s a different grape … to the table grapes that we know today, and that was a significant change.

So of course when we got the gold medal, they says, “Well Neil, go out and do it again for next year”, you know. But ‘79 was one of the worst vintages that I ever went through, and that sort of taught me that … come home to me in a big way, that ‘78 was, you know … really was a breeze … everything went good right the way through. But ‘79, everything went perfect up until we started harvesting, and then it started raining and it stayed raining for two weeks. And everything just turned to custard big time. Absolutely big time.

But anyway, the one good thing about that is that Tom McDonald had these trial blocks both at Taradale and Haumoana, and we used to just call them ‘fancy varieties’. But one of the varieties that was there was a variety called Syrah, which is well-known today. And I went and looked at these fancy varieties in ‘79 and of the varieties it was only the Syrah that was still there. And we’d done virtually nothing to them, but they were still there. All the others – the birds had stripped them, or they’d just turned to pus as we rightly called it, but botrytis. But the Syrah was still there, so that just … something clicked in the brainbox; ‘Do a little bit of work on these and see what we can do.’

So over the next three or four years I came back; we plucked them, thinned them, blah, blah, blah … eventually got them through, you know. But there was only twelve vines, so the company didn’t know anything, but didn’t do anything with them; but I learnt how to grow them, and that was what it was all about. So anyway, I’ll come back to that later on.

So I just made mention that everything was hand-picked in those days; but with the change from hybrid grapes which used to crop at ten ton to the acre plus – you know, unless you got ten ton to the acre you were broke, sort of thing. And as we went into the better wines, we had to get into other varieties which were lower-yielding, etcetera, but getting into high quality; but also getting them harvested on time.

So the first thing we had to do was to start altering, and start thinking about machine harvesting. And that really started off properly in the … early eighties it started off big time. Joker by the name of Did Ericksen – he brought the first machine harvester in, and that just allowed the grapes to be harvested, which was huge.

And the eighties, with this change in varieties, you know, before the Palominos and all that sort of jazz had to sort of go over … mark up 22 [?] and all that sort of stuff, so … had to get a new variety, which was Müller-Thurgau; that was going to be the saviour. So we planted Müller-Thurgau – both McWilliams did, and with contact growers; planted Müller-Thurgau here, there and everywhere. We thought that was going to be the be-all and end-all of everything, and that lasted four, five, six years and it fell over big time. And today there’s hardly a Müller-Thurgau left in New Zealand. So it was a learning curve; the whole of the eighties with the change, with machine harvesting, with the change in varieties, with the increase in acreage. And Anne just said, we built a house and then the interest rates went through the roof, and the share market happened, and in the late eighties we had Cyclone Bola; you know the eighties were just a blur, really. Honestly, we worked that hard it was ridiculous, you know, it was honestly … And as Anne just said, you know, she had to go back to work to pay the mortgage when we were at Hunters Hill, ‘cause interest rates just went through the roof. But the whole of the eighties was just a blur; but it was a nice blur in that everything was thrown at us, you know, both Mother Nature-wise and business-wise – everything was thrown at us.

And it was through the eighties that I first came in to corporate ownership big-time. McWilliams was basically owned by McWilliams Australia, and Lion Breweries New Zealand had a small shareholding in it, but McWilliams just controlled it. And then in the early eighties Ron Brierley, or Brierleys Limited – whatever they call themselves – they got involved in Cooks Wines by accident, and you know, the Brierley boys … compared with McWilliams, the Brierley boys were just totally ruthless. And Brierley’s went to Lion; said, “This is stupid – you’ve got shareholding over there that you don’t want. You sell that to us, and we’ve got hold of Cooks – and we’ll put them all together and make it a decent-sized company.” So that’s what they did, and that’s when Cooks-McWilliams eventuated, and that was just run by Brierley’s. Different management; different everything. They were just bean counters, and they were ruthless, to put it bluntly. But it was a learning curve, and it was either get out, or survive; so I survived – simple as that.

Negotiating the price of wines with the corporate boys …

Yeah.

… was quite different.

Yeah. So … different agenda. And that lasted several years, and then Brierley’s somehow got tied up with Corban’s as it was, which was a family-owned company in Auckland, and before long they had a big stake in that too. So Corban’s … you know, Cook’s-McWilliams disappeared, and the name of the company became Corban’s and it was all corporate controlled. But by this time we were getting big time, and most importantly, the style of wine was changing hugely, you know, everybody was drinking table wine. Fortified wine had just about gone out the window – one of the governments of the day put the tax up on it, and just blew that out the window, so it was all gone. And to be fair it was gut rot, a lot of it, you know – it was terrible stuff.

So we were getting into better and better table wines all the time. So that was the eighties. And the industry by the end of the eighties had grown to the extent that several of us that had been round a little while, just knew that for the industry to survive, we had to go export. And that’s a different scenario again, you know, ‘cause you’ve got to have the right volumes. And it was in the late eighties – you know, when I started off in the seventies, Marlborough didn’t exist; it just wasn’t there. Gisborne was the biggest region, followed by Hawke’s Bay, and that was the wine industry – Marlborough just didn’t exist.

So Marlborough started off in the late eighties, or mid to late eighties, but it started off very small. And they soon found that they could virtually only grow Sauvignon Blanc properly, which is pretty much the same story to this day, but they do grow it very, very well; whereas Hawke’s Bay can grow just about any variety that you like, and that’s the difference.

But with the success of Sauvignon Blanc, that made it even more patently obvious that export just had to go had – it had to be the means of getting rid of the wine. And so in the early nineties, [a] joker by the name of Jim Hamilton, Gary Wood and myself, we sort of just got round, and we were all viticulturists in the Hawke’s Bay area; and we all agreed that, you know, we had to make a set of rules to suit all this growing, otherwise the industry was going to be in big trouble. So it took us three, four, five years to put it all together, but we ended up with what we called sustainable wine making, or we called it IWP … Intergrated Wine Production is what we called it … but it was just a form of sustainable wine growing. And those rules are pretty much still there today because they’re basic. And my driving force was that you just can’t have one rule for everything; you’ve got to have a rule for each soil type – if you need irrigation you’ve got to do this; if you don’t need the irrigation you don’t have to – all that sort of thing. So with the, as I say, the explosion of vine planting in Marlborough, for the industry’s sake it was the best thing we ever did because it didn’t control it but it made them have to grow to certain rules, particularly with the water, and when to irrigate and how to irrigate, and to record what you irrigate, and all this sort of jazz. And that’s where we were; and that’s as I say, the early nineties. And I repeat, you know, that the wine styles and the wine grapes were just getting better and better and better all the time.

So Corban’s sold out to … or got taken over by Montana, and that would be the year 2000. And Montana at that stage was a publicly listed company; just got bigger and bigger; controlled by New Zealanders. By this time, the [?] of Brierley’s and so forth found that they … what Brierley’s couldn’t understand was that because you were growing a crop and the crop went up and down each year, they just couldn’t understand that you had you know, ten ton one year and a hundred ton next year; they just couldn’t understand that, so at the end of the day they wanted to control everything. So they got out of the industry and Montana took us over there for a while; and then after that the big overseas multinationals got involved. So were first owned by Allied Domecq there for a while, and then five or six years later we were taken over by Pernod Ricard, which still own us today.

But with the whole export thing, and wine growers just had to go higher and higher, all of a sudden we were finding where the vineyards were planted on the Heretaunga Plains, they were just too big a risk; they were just too big. So it was Chris Pask – he would’ve really got it going in the late eighties out on the Gravels; and through the nineties we sort of learned that this was different and in the mid-nineties the Gravels started taking off. And by the 2000, you know, the Triangle was beginning to take off also. And this was all about wine grapes, and I’d always been interested growing red grapes rather than white grapes ‘cause Sauvignon Blanc quite frankly, is a piece of cake to grow whereas Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot and those red varieties are a little bit more difficult because New Zealand is a cool climate viticulture, and all grapes, particularly red grapes, like hot climates, so to do it properly you’ve got to do it really good.

One of the things which happened in the eighties which I didn’t mention was … or I didn’t say too much about … was the grape pool, which changed everything. And that hastened the change from having the grapes on the Heretaunga Plains, to better sites. But one of the growers out on the Triangle that I was dealing with at the time was a joker by the name of Pat Donnelly, and he talked Tom McDonald into growing a few Palominos out there. I wanted him to grow Cabernet or Merlot out there, but Tom said, “No, we’re growing Palomino.” So we [?] out on the Triangle there on the Donnelly block, which was subsequently bought a few years later, but I knew then from that that grapes out there on the Triangle will survive provided they have water. The only trouble at that stage, we only had overhead pivot irrigators, which were useless as … you know, ‘cause when the wind blew out there, all the water … there was just no even spread of water at all. So those grapes got put out in the grape pool, but I knew that we could grow grapes out there quite good with the right management.

And so in about 1994, ‘95, we’d just finished vintage and I got this call from a joker by the name of Noel Scanlan, who was the CEO of Corban’s at the time. And he said, “Neil, I want you to look for some land which will grow red grapes.” And he said, “You know, I mean … serious, you know … serious area.” “Okay.” So away I went. I kept my mouth shut; didn’t tell anybody, because if I’d started letting the word out too much, all the prices just would’ve been horrendous – they were bad enough by the time we got round to doing it, but they would’ve been even more horrendous. So that was ‘95, ‘95 – whatever – and nothing happened for about twelve or eighteen months. I rung [rang] up Noel in early ‘97; I said, “Well, all the work’s been done – it’s over to you guys now.” And he said … my exact words … “Well unless you bloody well do something, let’s forget about it.” So within a week … “Neil, Board approval has been given; away we go.”

And by this time one of the owners of Corban’s was South Pacific Breweries, which was … I found out later on … was essentially the Singaporean Government; and the other one was Heineken, so there was no trouble with dollars; once they approved there was absolutely no trouble with dollars. But … “Okay, we want it done immediately.” So all of a sudden all the work that I’d done started coming to fruition, so I didn’t have to actually go looking for the land that I wanted; I’d already found it – I just had to buy it. And [to] cut a long story short, I looked out at the Matapiro region; looked a little bit more and done [did] a lot of homework out there, but discovered that because it was just a little bit too cool for red grapes … I’d looked hard at the Gravels, but one of the conditions that we had was that they wanted to be able to make wine of all grades, so they wanted top to bottom, and I knew the Gravels couldn’t do that. That was mainly from … mainly top end, and they wanted from top to bottom. So I had no … absolutely no trouble in buying a block of land called Webb Block in the Ngatarawa Triangle, as I still call it. And one of the briefs was that, “Okay, Neil – just buy some land that you can … buy big [?] blocks”, and away we went.

So we bought the Webb block in ‘97; and the great glory about it, there was just a hay barn on it and one shed, you know, it was just a bare site; it was absolutely … it was nobody else’s balls up sort of thing. So I called them to the effect that it was just bare land. And the Donnelly block was right next door to that; the Waiohiki block was right next door to that; and the Bledisloe block was right next door, and we ended up buying the whole lot, which took us up to about a hundred and fifty hectares. So all of a sudden we had a serious vineyard, and we sort of bought and developed that over three vintages … three years … ‘98, ‘99 and 2000.

The brief at the time was to plant them mainly in Bordeaux reds, which was you know, Cabernet Merlot; which … initially I had no problem with. But one of the best things I did was to take advice from other people as well as myself; I knew how to grow them, but seeing it was such a big project … the whole project cost – budget was $10,500,000; I did it for about $10.3, which I got a few brownie points for.

But you had to look at the various ways of doing it, and Damien Martin – he was the one that put us onto narrow row plantings – high density, so in other words if we were looking at ten ton to the hectare, we were looking at five thousand vines at two kgs [kilos] each, and getting them really ripe, rather than two thousand vines at five k.. and not getting them ripe. And that’s basically what it was all about. So we listened to him a lot; he was involved very [??]

Another chap, soil scientist whose name just won’t come to me at the moment, but he did an awful lot of work on the Heretaunga Plains, and even if you look at the map of the Heretaunga Plains at the moment, this guy did most of the … what was his name? I’ve got it written down here – it won’t come to me at the moment. Anyway, but he was brilliant. So we put the soil scientists, Damien and a joker by the name of Adrian Manning; he was the irrigation expert. Put them all together, blah, blah, blah, plus a little bit from me, and we ended up with a vineyard of [a] hundred and thirty-nine hectares planted. But more importantly, there was forty-four small blocks; ‘bout seventy-four water stations, so everything was watered to what was required, and most of the rows we could water one end of the row and not the other. And it was a detail that I’d never ever experienced before, but it was a godsend. Lot of work to keep it right, but it did.

So anyway, we planted over the ‘98, ‘99 and 2000 planting years; we planted all these Merlot and Cabernet, mainly. And I said to them in ‘98 – I said, “No, we’re putting all our eggs in one basket too much here,” I said. “We’ve got to start looking at the next level.” And their ears perked up; I said “Well, we’ve got to grow some other varieties that are not there now, but will be in a few years’ time.” And of course Syrah was one of those. So we got a hold of a lot of Syrah plants and stuck them in; and then immediately the old brain clicked in to what I’d learnt fifteen years ago at Haumoana and so forth – learning how to grow them. ‘Cause every variety is different; every root stock is different. You’ve got to do different things at different times to them, and a lot of people who don’t grow things just don’t understand that, you know. Us guys who do it, if you’ve got green fingers you know what to do; if you haven’t got green fingers you never do it; you just don’t know. So it’s all a matter of not what you do; it’s when you do it and how you do it.

So we planted in these Syrah, and away we went. And initially they were … all the winemakers … they were [?]; I said, “No, you’ve just got to give them time.” ‘Cause I’d learnt that from the Cabernet Sauvignon with Tom; that unless the vine’s, you know, seven or eight years old you’re wasting your time; and it’s not until they get to about twenty that they really come into their own – it just takes time. But a lot of bean counters don’t understand that.

But anyway, by 2004 one of the winemakers said, “Hey, Neil, I can taste the difference on these.” And I said, “Yeah, well just give us time, you know – just blend it away for the time being”, blah, blah, blah. “Don’t do anything”. “Okay – ‘cause I’m going to keep an eye on these, Neil.” I said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you when they’re ready”. And they were ready in 2007, and we went on to win the Air New Zealand with that wine – Champion Wine of the Show with the 2007 wine. And that just really made them understand how much the block could do, and from there on we’ve won plenty of other medals and so forth.

But it’s all about growing quality rather than quantity, and that’s the philosophy that I started way back in 1978 with the Chardonnay. And then in the eighties we had a few other Chardonnay blocks we won the Air New Zealand award with and Champion Wine of the Show with. So we won it twice in the eighties with a Chardonnay; we won it once in the nineties with a bubbly wine which I can tell you [chuckle] a bit of a story ‘bout that one. And then we went on to win it in 2007. 2012 we had runner-up; 2012 was another terrible year … all overcast and terrible, so I was really rapt getting the runner-up awarded in 2012; and won it again in 2013, so through all the years I actually … grapes that I’d either grown myself or had a huge amount of input into, won the Air New Zealand on five occasions and we were runner-up once. So over a period of time I’m quite happy with that.

But the story, like I say, about the bubbly – it was a mixture of Pinot Noir and a bit of Chardonnay. It was a bubbly called Verde and it was in the mid … ‘96 or ‘97 it was, I think. But even in the mid-nineties we were still sort of thinking, ‘Okay, we grow the grapes and then we just look what we can make with it at the end of the year, depending on what [how] the year turned out’; whereas today it’s all targeted, and it has been for the last fifteen years; it’s been targeted right from pruning time; this is going to that, that, that, and whatever. But Christmas time is …through all the Christmases that Anne and I’ve [been] together, I always worked so we didn’t go away on too many holidays and so forth through the December-January period because it was a critical time for the grapes; so I just worked. And prior to Christmas of this year, I’d spoken to [?Evan Ward?] and I said, “There’s no surprises coming up?” They said, “No, no, no – everything’s sweet”, you know. “That’s good”; so … just kept on going. And come back, and then Evan come [came] to me in the middle of January; he said, ”Oh Neil, they want a bubbly.” I said, “Excuse me?!” [Chuckles] He said, “Yeah, they want a bubbly. All the marketing guys – they’ve had their Christmas break and they’ve tasted all these bubbles; and we haven’t got any bubbles, so they want a bubbly.” Well I went right off! I said, “For God’s sake! Isn’t it about time somebody told these jokers what to do?” And I said, “We haven’t grown anything, we haven’t prepared for it, we’ve got no gear, we’ve got no nothin’!” “Well never mind – that’s what we’ve got to do.”

So we sat down and said, “Okay. I’ve got to go and see a couple of growers”, which I did. “We’ll do this and we’ll do that, and away we go.” And they said, “Well – how are we going to harvest them, Neil?” I said, “Well I don’t quite know at the moment”; they always wanted them hand-harvested, you see. I said, “We haven’t got any gear to harvest; we haven’t got any bins; we haven’t got nothin’.” So Evan and I started talking. He said, “Well, Neil, you’ve got to hand-pick them.” I said, “Well we haven’t got any gear to hand-pick them; we’ve got to machine-harvest them.” Well Evan Ward went right through the roof. I says, “Well, tough s—; that’s what we’re going to do.” So to cut a long story short, Evan Ward wasn’t happy; I wasn’t happy; so we had a guy in the middle by the name of Ian Leith, and he was on the crusher. So what we did is that we machine-harvested this Pinot Noir, which is the worst way to do it for bubbly [?] – it really is. But we did, and we made sure the truck blades were very, very low so they could get into the crusher, be crushed and processed properly so there is virtually no skin contact. And Evan was out controlling the tanks, and I was out controlling the harvesting, and this Ian Leith – he was the boss. He was running [???]; said, “Well, yeah Neil, send us another truck; we’ve got this one done”. And they washed out the bins and everything, and the [?] and so forth. So to cut a long story short, we did everything the wrong way, and about six months later Evan come [came] to me, saying, “Neil, we’ve got something here.” [Chuckles] And it worked out a treat; and that wine went on to win the Air New Zealand. And on the back label they said … oh, “This is marvellously hand-picked”, and all this sort of s—. [Chuckles] We never did [chuckle] – we broke every rule in the book, but we got there.

So anyway, I ended up – I didn’t want to, and I wasn’t asked ‘cause I’d had too many arguments with some of the real … fellows up the top; but I always kept up coming up with the goods so they had no reason to fire me, for the sake of a better word. But we had some eyeball to eyeball discussions on many occasions, don’t worry ‘bout that, but I always come up with the goods. And when the development of Redstone came along I said, “Yeah – I’ll make this into something, from nothing”, and as I say, we won two new Air New Zealands in a period of fifteen years – we started from scratch – and one runner-up. That’s just magic, and there’s more to come from the block, I tell you right here and now.

The fascinating thing is the amount of making in the vineyard of wine that we didn’t ever …

Know about. The likes of modern winemakers – and Chris Scott over at Church Road is the first to admit it now – he can do a multitude of things to it in the winery, but he cannot put flavour into it. That’s got to happen in the – and ‘specially whereby, you know, colour, that’s got to happen, just to do it properly. So you know – like, when I first kicked off winemakers were winemakers; ‘cause to put it bluntly, some of the grapes that were sent in were low quality, but now – and this last vintage would’ve been a classic – I know of lots of blocks that were just bypassed, because the grapes weren’t going to make their wine [?] so they were just bypassed. So it’s brutal these days, absolutely brutal. But that’s the industry you’re in, and as I say, people’s expectation[s] of wine have changed so much that they don’t want that big box grade any longer; they want a real good table wine, and they expect it. And wine companies, unless they can produce it they don’t make it.

There’s so many practises now …

Yeah. Well you know, I go back to 1978 when I did that on a very small scale; what I did in viticulture in ‘78, I’d actually learnt in the horticultural field. And you just … you know, there’s things that can relate. But you know, as I said earlier, crop thinning in apples has been around for a hundred years, and it always will be; whereas in grape vines, it’s a relatively new thing. And the big thing that I had to learn – and this is what I learnt in the early eighties with those few vines of Syrah – is that you crop thin very, very late, ‘cause if you crop thin too early, the berries will self-compensate, just like an apple does. Instead of having a whole lot of small apples, you have big ones. And with the grape vine … with berries … that’s the last thing you wanted, because that decreased the colour, ‘cause all the colour is in the skin. So you’ve still got to have a berry of no more than 1.2 grams to do it, but if you thin too early, all of a sudden they’ll go out to 1.5 grams and they won’t make good wine. So you’ve got this very narrow time of when to do it, and it’s just experience and so forth, and judging the vines and taking them as they come in, and knowing what to do and when to do it.

The other major thing that I’ve got to say, is that when I first started out … I started working in 1966 … the types of chemicals and the amount of chemicals that were used was just horrific, you know. The absolute classic one was … oh, about ‘72, ‘73 … when a chemical by the name of benlate, which most people can relate to – that was going to be the first of the new wonder fungicides. And it was – it was brilliant; but we didn’t know how to use it so before we knew where we were, we had resistance to it, and we had a major, major problem, right through the pip fruit industry and a little bit of the viticultural industry. And so everybody got involved, so … “We’ve got a chemical down in Mapua that you know, we don’t know how to fix it. This’ll fix it.” Away we went. We didn’t bother to read labels or anything that – you know, that’s just the way we were. Well it turned out to be mercury. So we [chuckle] … we sprayed mercury willy-nilly for about six weeks, until we realised; well, we’d run out of chemical – “That’s it, we’ve got no more of that anyway”, but we sprayed mercury for six weeks.

And it worked?

It worked. [Chuckle]

But it’s amazing the way things have changed.

Changed – yeah. No, to the industry’s credit, and like pip fruit now, they just don’t used organo-phosphates, full stop. And you know, there’s a lot of monitoring and so forth, and that’s what we did with the sustainable viticulture, as it turned out. It’s mainly monitoring – you don’t do anything unless you’ve got a good reason to do it. And if there’s nothing … if it wasn’t required to do, well you don’t do it. But in the old days we just did it; just … you know, just did it every two weeks, just because we thought we had to do it, where it was nonsense.

It hasn’t been that long from when you left school and started off on your adventure …

Yeah, well … like, I did thirty-nine vintages. As far as the red wine production in Hawke’s Bay, it’s not thirty years old yet, most of it. It’s just a baby. And it’s you know, a few guys … you know, like Sir George Fistonich from Villa [Maria] – he always had faith. And I just had faith to … didn’t want [???]; like, we were two opposite ends of the scale in contribution, but you know, if you all do your bit – yeah, ‘way you go.

I see he’s going to build a new winery out at …

Yep – it’s already built, apparently. Well they bought Te Awa Estate some years ago. And I’m not one hundred percent certain of this, but I’m reasonably certain so I’ll say it; but the Vidal’s Winery down St Aubyn Street, well that’s just not in the right location any longer now, so – hopefully they’ll keep the restaurant going, ‘cause Anne and I go to that restaurant quite often, and it’s fantastic food there. But the winery side of it – it’s in the wrong location, it’s the wrong gear, it’s the wrong everything; so you’ve got to update it so they’re building a new one out there and it’s just going to be solely for red wine, which is different from white wine.

The only thing that’s still the same from when I started to now, is the word ‘viticulture’. Everything else has changed. As I say, it was all about … volume-driven when I kicked off, ‘cause no-one really cared what they drunk, or what sort of style of wine to drink; they just drunk [drank] for the sake of drinking wine.

We used to drink Nobilo’s Red – stuff you wouldn’t use to cook with these days.

[Chuckles] Exactly! Exactly. But now, you know … I belong to two wine clubs, but I go to the wine club that I’ve got the most out of. And in hindsight it’s something I should’ve done a lot earlier in my career, is start going to a wine club; but it’s at the National Service Club in Market Street, in Hastings. And it’s just a working man’s club, but all these people … and there’s ninety members to it now. It’s not unusual to get sixty, seventy there once a month, and people come in. But it teaches you what the consumer actually wants. And, “Oh, okay”, you know, “I can do that.” And all of a sudden you go up another level, and away you go.

So … well, you’re not quite retired yet, are you, Anne?

Anne:  No, not quite.

Do you do much travelling?

Yeah. Well we’ve just come back from … well, first of all you know, because of the viticulture, Anne and I’ve … I took Anne and the kids away for a holiday, Christmas 1980, you know; bucketed down with rain. And that was the year the Ngaruroro broke its banks at Twyford, and it bucketed down with rain, so Bob Knappstein called me back and I just kept on working. And I’d never had a Christmas off then until we chucked in the towel, which was 2015. So we wanted to do a little bit of travel; so we’ve just done one of the river cruises from Budapest to Amsterdam … just come back, you know, we did that in June of this year. And that was absolutely brilliant. And talking to a few mates, and they’ve already booked into sort of taking off, and going to do one next year. But yeah – both of us have been that “busy” – inverted commas – that quite frankly, holidays have always been on the back burner, ‘cause when I’ve been busy and Anne hasn’t, you know, or vice versa. So now that it’s just Anne and I – ‘cause it wasn’t until Brittany took off sort of fifteen months ago; we’d always had kids at home, so it was …

Anne: First time in forty-one years …

Neil: First time in forty-one years that we had no kids at home.

You must have some grandchildren, though?

Yeah, we’ve got two grandchildren.

What are their names, and where do they live?

Anne: Oh, well there’s Ivy, she’s almost six; and Lila, whose three. And they’re very strong-willed young ladies.

And where do they live?

They live in Auckland. Ivy comes down – she started coming down two holidays ago – flying down on her own. And the whole family are coming to see us at Labour Weekend. We didn’t think that she would be down, but her father rang last night and said, “She’s insisting she comes down.” So she comes for three nights each time, so that’s good.

So anything else? You showed me round this lovely site where your house is with your lake, and your birds – lots of birds around. So is there anything else you can think of?

Neil: Basically when I decided to pull the pin when I was sixty-five, I could’ve gone on longer. But with the demands of viticulture you’ve just got to be on the ball all the time, and so I decided at sixty-five to pull the pin. And I’ve given myself two years, just to calm down and relax, get the rhythm and …

Neil’s retiring … he’s either throwing the towel in, or pulling the pin … [Chuckles]

Anne: Yeah; yeah.

Neil: So I decided you know, after thirty-nine vintages I was happy with what I’ve achieved, and I’d rather leave it when I was on top, you know, I was successful in the game; but most importantly, health-wise.

Well I’m sure that you’ll be recognised for your contribution to the industry; and to Heretaunga Plains, and to New Zealand wider industry.

Hawke’s Bay’s always been good to me; it’s a great place to live; good people. But it’s just a [?] place.

Anne: Even our daughter … you know, she’s had to go away to find out that Hawke’s Bay’s got a lot to offer. [Chuckle]

Okay. Well thanks, Anne, and thanks, Neil – we’ll leave it at that.

And it’s all over.