The Profile: Geoff Wright

Now, 22 years after he made his first wine as a student in Gisborne, Wrights Vineyard & Winery has won Sustainable Winery of the Year at the 2022 New Zealand Organic Wine Awards which he’s “totally over the moon with”.

Geoff says he was “still a kid” when he left a corporate job in Auckland in 2000, aged 25, to follow his growing interest in wine by moving to Gisborne to study at the Eastern Institute of Technology. He’d previously studied business and marketing (and is still a chartered accountant), but wine was something he had to learn from the ground up. “We got to grow our own grapes, make our own wine and we had two lecturers with PhDs, so we were lucky and could learn a lot. I was a bit of a sponge back then.”

The course included making his own wine and going through the marketing process of labelling. “Then in 2001, I went out and purchased fruit and was able to use their facility to make a commercially viable wine.” The fruit was certified organic and vegan, which created a stir he hadn’t expected. “Not a lot of people knew about animal products going into wines at the time,” he says. “We were the first winery in New Zealand to be certified vegan, and all of a sudden, I had television news crews coming around to interview me and I was on Nightline. My wines were in hardly any shops at the time, so it was interesting trying to launch a new brand and do all the marketing and sales as well.”

It was only after he completed the course that his aunt told him his great grandfather Stanko Jurakovich was one of the original winemakers in 1930s Auckland. “Our original vineyard and winery was sold to Kumeu River in the late 1940s.” Perhaps that’s why “something just clicked” early on, and Geoff worked hard to save for a deposit on his first piece of land on a north facing hill in the Ormond Valley. He purchased the land in 2005 and planted 20,000 ungrafted cuttings, which he had been growing for two years in the kiwifruit orchard of a work colleague.

Later that year, he met his future wife, Nicola. “She had told her mother that she was going to Gisborne to meet Mr Right and said he was going to be a winemaker and that she was going to fill the car with kids.” It all turned out to be true, says Geoff, noting the five sons they now have helping in the cellar door, vineyard and winery. “Only the spelling of Mr Right is Mr Wright. She now looks back and says she wishes she’d been a little more specific and wished for an established vineyard.”

The lure of lovely beaches and a friendly lifestyle were drawcards to Gisborne but following his dream of owning a vineyard and winery did not prove an easy journey. “I didn’t even make any money for the first 15 years,” Geoff says. And while Wrights was naturally an organic vineyard, that’s a perennial challenge. “The easiest part of being organic is to know that we’re not doing any harm to the soil when we produce wine, which impacts on my family, my workers and the next generation,” he says.

“One of the biggest issues of running an organic vineyard is the grass competition.” A recent development is a mower that throws the grass underneath the grapevines as mulch. “That’s a practice that at times can work quite well. What we’re getting is utilising the mowed grass and chucking it in as a mulch then turning the soil over for microbial activity and composting down. We’re adding a lot more organic matter.”

As well as protecting the soil, Geoff, Nicola and the five boys are restoring a wetland. “We are extending our stewardship of the land by planting native trees and looking after the land around our vineyards. It’s about more than the grapes.”

The Organic Wine Awards Sustainable Winery of the Year Award recognises producers who have excelled above and beyond Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand requirements and organic certification, including social responsibilities to sustain and improve the local environment. In awarding Wrights, the judges noted that it continually seeks to improve its practices and seek out new initiatives, including native planting, composting, vegetable gardens for use at the cellar door, and support of local community initiatives. “Wrights are a shining example of how a winery can add benefit to the local area, both economic and social, whilst running a healthy, organic vineyard.”

The couple have grown their brand significantly over the years and now own 18 hectares of vines, including Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, as well as Pinot Noir that predominantly comes from vines grown in the Ormond Valley. “We do really well with Pinot Noir,” says Geoff. “It’s a lovely rich wine, quite deep in colour with nice cherry flavours and made in quite a ripe style. We do a bit of fruit thinning as well because grapes in Gisborne can be quite vigorous.”

Their next brand is to be called Love It, because “we’ve been in business for a while and we still love it”, says Geoff. “This brand won’t mention organics on the front but may have mention it on the back label. So far, we’re planning to make a Rosé and a Syrah.” It’s been a “massive effort” for the couple to get Wrights into retailers nationwide, so “it’s bloody exciting seeing people now regularly enjoying our wines”, he says.

From December this year, Wrights will have a cellar door and business manager in charge. “We’ve generally been a husband-wife team and run the business in a very lean way, but as we’ve increased production – and we want to revitalise the cellar door – we need a little help and more work-life balance.” Geoff says. “Looking back, nearly 25 years since we began, I realise that we’ve been pretty fortunate, and the win of Sustainable Winery of the Year is a great achievement for us.”

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