Women in Wine: Growing wine and community

She’s in the ‘who’s who’ of local wine personalities, and was the first woman to receive the Central Otago Winegrowers’ Association (COWA) award for outstanding service to the industry, back in 2009.

Her involvement in the wine community spans some three decades, and she’s seen Central Otago grow from small beginnings to an internationally significant region, with now more than 2055 hectares of vines in production.

When Heather and her then husband John Olssen bought land to establish Olssens Garden Vineyard in the late eighties, it was mostly surrounded by farmland running merinos, and a few orchards. Following in the footsteps of “a few visionaries”, they planted 10ha of vines on their Felton Road property overlooking the Kawarau River arm of Lake Dunstan. “When we came there were four other vineyards in Central Otago,” says Heather. “We were the first to plant in Bannockburn, in fact first in the entire Cromwell Basin.”

John had his sights set on orcharding, but Heather was able to steer him towards planting vines with the help of a consultant who identified theirs as a preferred site for grape growing. “Alan Brady had just released some wine from Gibbston and I thought grapes would be more interesting,” says Heather.

Cromwell-born, and with a career in nursing behind her, she had met John when she was principal public health nurse for Otago, and he was managing Dunedin’s public hospital. Brothers Rob and Greg Hay, who were establishing Chard Farm’s winery in the Gibbston Valley at the time, helped set up the vineyard, while Heather and John moved to Perth for three years. Heather loved her work there, where she reorganised the way children with disabilities were supported through pre-schools across Western Australia.

But it was soon time to get serious with the wine business, and they returned to Central Otago for their first vintage in 1992. From then Olssens Wines went on to gain a steady reputation for quality, with numerous national awards and trophies. Their winery was in Cromwell’s industrial area, but they opened a cellar door at the vineyard, which was set in landscaped park-like grounds, with hundreds of trees and shrubs, where some 4,000 spring bulbs flourished.

The vineyard became the setting for community events as Heather contrived to get the public more involved with the wine community. Locals seemed reluctant early on to visit the cellar door, says Heather, as the wine experience now enjoyed by thousands of visitors to the region wasn’t a thing back then. She introduced a scarecrow competition as a pre-harvest drawcard, promoting it through local primary schools, and was astounded when 500 people turned up.

This led to other community events in the spectacular setting, including outdoor music concerts and sculpture exhibitions. Heather’s creative and organisational skills flowed across into the entire wine community and as a long-time committee member and Chair of COWA she worked tirelessly organising promotions including tastings, dinners and events.

Her proudest achievement was initiating a showcase of Central Otago wines for the public and trade in London, which was an outstanding success. Subsequently New Zealand Winegrowers were to follow suit, “…but we were the first to do it”, she says. The vineyard and wine business were sold to Terra Sancta in 2011. Heather has kept busy with a smaller town garden, her arts interests, and she keeps her hand in with the grape harvest, despite suffering a stroke in recent years.

She received a community service award from the Central Otago District Council in 2017, notably for her leadership of the Cromwell & Districts Community Arts Council, which she had chaired for 16 years. She was also nominated in 2018 for New Zealander of the Year.

Heather will soon be busy again coordinating the Cromwell Food and Wine Festival, as she has done since 2012. It’s a hugely popular event in the Old Cromwell precinct, and is back on the calendar on 2 January after last summer’s festival was cancelled due to Covid.