Bannockburn to Bangladesh: Owen Calvert's 'life of contrasts'

The phone connection for our interview is patchy as he traverses this lightly populated corner of the world, unlike the smooth cell coverage he gets in Bangladesh, where he lives when not visiting his Bannockburn vineyard, but far better than Bhutan, where he communicated with morse code and letters on his first overseas posting in 1987. “If I ever write a book, it’ll be called My Life of Contrasts,” Owen says, reflecting on 35 years as an agricultural advisor in undeveloped and developing countries, and a parallel life with Calvert Vineyard, an iconic name in New Zealand wine.

As he drives through peaceful climes on this clear mid-August morning, in the wake of wining and dining guests at the Central Wine Retreat, Owen is days out from his planned return to Bangladesh, population 173 million, which has been going through political turmoil in the few weeks he’s been in New Zealand, with 300 killed during protests in Dhaka, where he lives. Owen’s role in Bangladesh, as project leader for a United States-led agriculture mechanisation initiative, is the latest in a long line of jobs helping vulnerable rural communities. That journey started with what he thought was a one-off project with Volunteer Services Abroad in Bhutan in 1987. He and other volunteers were urged to find a project to focus on when they returned to New Zealand, to offset reverse culture shock, and his brother mentioned a block of land for sale in Bannockburn, with potential for the likes of cherries. Communication with New Zealand was limited to letters, so Owen relied on descriptions and photos from his family before buying the block in 1989. He saw it for the first time a year later, then returned to Bhutan, nowhere near ready to stop the work he loved.

In 1991 Owen moved to the United Kingdom for a master’s degree in international development, before taking a job with Oxfam UK in Somalia in 1992, in the midst of a civil war and drought. Bhutan was arguably the most peaceful country in the world, and Somalia quite probably the most dangerous, he notes. If Owen does write that biography, there’ll surely be a chapter recalling events in October 1993, when his Bannockburn land was still paddocks, New Zealand wine was going gangbusters, and he was skipping rope on the flat roof of a Mogadishu house – one of the few opportunities to exercise during his Somalia posting. The level of gunfire was greater than usual, and his regular evening skip stalled when he noticed helicopters coming in and a fleet of US military trucks gathered on the street below. “I thought, ‘you know what, maybe I shouldn’t be jump roping on the roof. Maybe I should turn on CNN.’ I was watching Black Hawk Down live.”

After the Battle of Mogadishu, his team moved to Kenya, where he met his wife-to-be Michele, who also worked in development. Around that time vineyards were taking hold in the Cromwell Basin, including Felton Road, which was established by blackcurrant farmer Stewart Elm (formerly owner of Dunedin’s City Hotel) just down the road from Owen’s block. “After seeing what others were doing in the vineyard and wine industry, I thought, ‘ok, maybe I should give that a shot’,” says Owen, who was still living in Nairobi when he asked viticulturist Robin Dicey to plant 4 hectares of vineyard for him in 1998, with an ethos of balancing sustainable production with native and exotic plantings.

Owen and his young family spent a year in Cromwell in 2000, seeing Calvert grow towards its first harvest. But he and Michele felt a “strong pull” to continue their work in the development sector, and went on to a five-year stint in Mozambique, followed by time in Kenya, where Owen still supports a small NGO in his own time, helping develop opportunities for women in agriculture. The family then moved to the US for eight years, where Owen managed major development projects from their base in Washington DC.

In early 2001, as Calvert approached its first harvest, Felton Road Winemaker Blair Walter asked if they could buy the grapes and manage the vineyard. By 2003 they had started Calvert’s organic conversion, following Felton Road’s lead, in two of the earliest organic transitions in New Zealand, Blair says. Calvert was certified with BioGro by 2007, and from 2006 to 2012 Felton Road shared fruit with Craggy Range and Pyramid Valley, with each of the prestigious labels making a single vineyard Pinot Noir from the block. Blair notes that the trio of single vineyard wines drew attention to Calvert, helping frame it as one of New Zealand’s hallowed vineyards. And it was a great model as far as Owen was concerned, allowing him to focus on his work in far flung corners of the world while iconic labels made beautiful wines from his vineyard.

Then in 2013, a necessary restructure saw a block sold to Felton Road, who still make their own Calvert label from it. Since then, Cloudy Bay has purchased Calvert Vineyard’s grapes for the Te Wahi Pinot Noir. By 2017 Owen was divorced and his kids were at university, so he came back to New Zealand, wondering if it was time to settle back on his land. The thought was quickly shelved when he was offered a role with the United Nations in South Sudan, where he has fond memories of Sunday roasts with the Kiwi contingent. The parallel life in Bannockburn continued, and in 2018 Owen negotiated with Cloudy Bay to buy back some grapes for his own label, made by winemaker Sarah Burton. It’s only a few thousand bottles a year, but was a chance to “dab our toes in the market”, says Owen, who has been “thrilled” by the response to those wines.

In 2022, following time in New Zealand during Covid-19, Owen started his latest mission abroad, this time helping grow a domestic skills, service and manufacturing sector to sustain Bangladesh’s mechanisation strategy. “The end goal is to improve the lives of smallholding farmers,” he says, noting that, akin to Kenya and other developing countries, many of the farmers are women, as men leave for work in the cities or abroad. His first posting in Bhutan was exactly 400km due north of where he now lives in Dhaka. “I don’t know if this is going to be my swan song, but it’s certainly the tail end of my career,” Owen says. “I have done a full circle around the globe and come back to the same region.”

Meanwhile the life of contrasts continues, with fresh memories of Central Otago’s Wine Retreat as he returns to a very different reality in the Bay of Bengal. “I still remain passionate about both worlds, and will continue to do so as long as I can feel like I am contributing positively.”