Unfathomable flooding at Petane

On the night of the flooding, Philip and his wife Sarah Johnson abandoned their battle against the water climbing their staircase and clambered onto the roof of their Esk Valley home with their two small children. “Then the four bay steel tractor shed ripped apart in front of us and all the tractors floated away,” says Philip. “I thought, ‘if we all end up in the water we are probably going to die’.”

In the weeks since, a community-championed cleanup has barely touched the surface of destruction to his home and Petane winery and vineyards, along with his brother Chris’s demolished house and Zeelandt Brewery. But a team of helpers have dug through the insidious silt in his winery and cellar and rescued 12,000 bottles of wine, now cleaned to Ministry for Primary Industries standards. He’s getting plenty of orders, and an auction house in Auckland has offered to help him out, “so I think we will sell it all”.

And despite the unfathomable trauma and financial loss, Philip remains philosophical. His family is safe, including Chris, who was stranded in the ceiling cavity with his own family as the flooding destroyed his home, until three locals in a boat smashed their way through the ceiling to rescue them the next morning.

“They zoomed up to my deck and offered a lift and I said, ‘nah go and help my brother,” says Philip, who was 600 metres away from Chris’s house. “I thought they were dead for sure – they took ages finding them,” he adds, beyond grateful to that “amazing” trio. “After that, I could deal with the loss of the vineyard; when I knew everyone was safe.”

Looking back, Philip and Sarah believe that if they hadn’t witnessed the torrent with their own eyes – including flood waters funneling down their drive and shunting huge logs into their carport – the destruction would have been harder to accept.

Now they are left with plenty of decisions, including whether the enormous job of removing the silt from the vineyard is viable. “If I could get the vineyard back it would be legendary. I have been there 16 years growing grapes,” says Philip, who cut his winegrowing teeth on his father’s Kumeu vineyard. “But I don’t know if I have the energy to save the vines.”

The Petane wine label will keep going, with Philip planning to buy fruit from great growers in the region, and reduce his range from 15 different wines in eight different varieties to a handful of options, with a couple of Pet Nats, a Chardonnay and maybe a Gamay. “Sarah says this is an opportunity to do something different.”

Meanwhile, they’re counting the many acts of community kindness they’ve seen, from “a guy called Jono” who gave them a lift after the flood, to the team that turned up to get the wines out and wash the bottles (see facing page). Then a team turned up with utes and shovels to help them clear the house out, he says. “People have been amazing.”