What brought you to Waipara? It’s my home region! Born and bred in Christchurch, so it is nice and close to home and family. Also being a Crusaders supporter was a major drawcard.
Where have you travelled in wine to get here? Studied at Lincoln, before working in the vineyards in Gibbston Valley for a year. Then took a job at Greystone on the vineyard. As the company grew I was able to work more and more with the wine, and haven’t looked back since! I was able to travel to the Barossa valley in ’08 and work a vintage there just before Greystone began harvesting.
What do you enjoy most about your job? The variety of work I get ‘on the shop floor’ so to speak – creating a wine from scratch through all stages of production really floats my boat. It’s really awesome to see a bottle of wine roll off the packaging line and think “I made that!” I guess the measure of success I have is how many times I can help get our winemaker up to the podium to receive awards!
What do you enjoy most about Waipara? The landscape is really something. I’ve trudged up and down the hills enough to appreciate them fully! The crew we work with are amazing people, and so are the locals. Good people = good wine!
When you’re not making wine or growing grapes? Pretty much 98% of my time away from the winery is spent raising my three kids Cole, Ella and Cooper with my darling wife Jess. We also have another on the way so life is going to be rather busy for a few years! When I do get some time off, I can be found at the Aikido dojo; training for my next grading as a black belt. I also enjoy a spot of running and fishing and other blokey stuff like that.
It sucks when….? at 4am you open the doors of the press to find your 7 tonne of Pinot Gris needs another few cycles to get the right extraction rate-so you put the twentieth pot of coffee on!
Your favourite wine? We are lucky in the fact that at the end of vintage we have what we call the ‘Burgundy dinner’, where we can sit down and try some of the wines from the region of the same name. My favourite last time was a white Burgundy from Domaine Roulot, Mersault 2008. Delicious! I wouldn’t mind at all if I had a few cases of that squirreled away… I’m also a bit partial to the Greystone Brother’s Reserve Pinot, but maybe that’s just my cellar palette talking…yeah nah.
Which wine region excites you most right now?
That’s a tough question. I think that Waipara has a lot of untapped potential as yet, with new land to be explored and the refining of wine styles within its sub-regions. It will be really interesting to see where the wind blows us.
Future aspirations? I’ve been dabbling with making a bit of wine here and there so I would love to set up my own label someday. I think Tait Estate has a nice ring to it, don’t you? ν
