Preserved in amber

Steve Wood, head brewer at the Shakespeare Hotel and Brewery on Auckland’s Albert Street. IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP

WORDS: MATT PHILP

Heritage – real or implied – plays a big part in one of our oldest industries: the brewing of beer

History is inescapable – and in the case of the Shakespeare Hotel and Brewery, immovable too. In 1986 the legendary downtown Auckland watering hole became New Zealand’s first brewpub, a development that required the installation of a 1400-litre brewery in the basement.

“They took the floor off, gutted the inside, lowered all the fermenters and serving tanks in there, put the floor down, then built walls around it,” says recently appointed head brewer Steve Wood.

“Those tanks in the basement, you can’t get them out and you can’t put new ones in – it’s a challenge.”

Steve left his job with the craft beer label Hallertau in 2019 to take on the Shakespeare’s 40-year-old “beast of a brewing system”, one of three of its type built and installed by the New Zealand Dairy Association back in the day, when smaller breweries would repurpose tanks and other gear used by the dairy industry rather than import.

“I wanted to prove that good beer can be made on this kit,” he explains.

But it wasn’t just the professional challenge that drew Steve to the Shakespeare – it was the heritage.

The 1898 Italianate hotel is an Auckland landmark, and its brewing operation once had a committed following, before time and beer trends passed it by. “It’s a historic building, a historic brewery, so why not try to put the Shakespeare name back in the minds of craft beer drinkers?”

Heritage is a big deal when it comes to beer. In fact, for a beverage best consumed fresh, history is an increasingly potent factor in marketing the stuff. Yet this country’s brewing landscape is not exactly blessed with storied sites and enduring labels.

That’s not because we’ve only just discovered the amber fluid – in 1921, there were 57 breweries operating around New Zealand, and they generally inspired fierce tribal loyalty in their regions.

What happened to them? Some of the early ones, which were often built of timber, were lost to fires. One reason given for so many pioneering New Zealand breweries being named ‘Phoenix’ is that they tended to rise from the ashes. But more were consumed by market forces.

“Many of the older breweries were bought up by DB and Lion and then shut down,” says Michael Donaldson, author of Beer Nation: The Art & Heart of Kiwi Beer. “That’s the crying shame: we lost vast tracts of history through rationalisation in that post-war period.”

Some of our most significant early brewing sites are largely ruins. The goldrush-era, Category 1 Black Horse

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Brewery at Bluejacket Gully, for example, once Otago’s most important provincial brewery, is dominated by the remains of its brick malting plant amid 10 hectares of daffodils.

Other early breweries have been repurposed, as in the case of the heritage-listed 1915 Thorndon Brewery Tower, which was formerly home to the Staples and Red Band beer brands and is now the central feature of the local New World supermarket complex.

Thankfully, two major historic brewing sites endure: the Tui Tower at Mangatainoka, in the Tararua District (see sidebar), and Speight’s of Dunedin.

The former, a Category 1-listed, seven-storey tower built in 1931 that used gravity to turn malt into beer, occupies the site on which sawmiller Henry Wagstaff founded an eponymous brewery in 1889, reputedly after savouring a superlative cup of tea brewed using water from the Mangatainoka River.

The tower hasn’t been used for brewing since the 1970s, when a new complex was built around it, but the label’s owner, DB, has turned Tui into a national brand, partly by trading on the heritage. In 2005 it opened ‘Tui HQ’ at Mangatainoka, offering brewery tours that delve into the 130-year history of the site.

Michael Donaldson, who is quick to highlight instances of myth-making by New Zealand beer brands, says that in this case DB is drawing on authentic history.

“Everything that led to the creation of the brewery and the brand was pretty organic and genuine and not too contrived,” he says.

That’s echoed by Nick Rogers, former marketing manager for Tui, who these days works in a freelance

“It’s a historic building, a historic brewery, so why not try to put the Shakespeare name back in the minds of craft beer drinkers?”

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THE DARK SIDE

Yeah, right? A little known sidebar to the Tui story is that, for a brief period in the 1960s, Mangatainoka became the first New Zealand site to brew Guinness. Rod Smith, author of Guinness Down Under, says the Irish chose Tui for the prestigious franchise partly because they didn’t want to alienate the local ‘Big Two’ – New Zealand Breweries (now Lion Nathan) and DB – by choosing one over the other. Guinness insisted that a Guinness brewer was employed on site, and Tui invested in new plant to raise its game.

“They tried their darnedest to make a decent drop, but there are mixed reports,” says Rod. In any case, the Tui-brewed stout didn’t sell well, and Guinness made the call to switch to New Zealand Breweries’ Auckland operation. Yet before quitting Mangatainoka, the Irish “sweetened the pill”, says Rod.

“Guinness agreed to pay half the cost of repainting the Tui plant. It’s the way they used to operate: if there’s bad news to break, do something nice.” n

1 The historic Shakespeare Hotel.

2 The Shakespeare’s elegant staircase.

3 Steve Wood and fellow beer lovers.

4 Steve Wood samples a brew. IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP

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capacity managing visitor experiences at Mangatainoka and the Monteith’s brewery in Greymouth.

“Longevity is a good thing for beer brands,” says Nick. “If you look at the ones that have provenance stories, they’ve lasted a lot better in New Zealand than ones that haven’t.”

None has lasted longer than Speight’s, established in 1876 by Dunedin businessman James Speight, maltster Charles Greenslade and brewer William Dawson.

Although various aspects of the operation were initially scattered around Dunedin, eventually the brewery was consolidated at 200 Rattray Street, where Speight’s has been made ever since.

Deidre Wilson is the daughter of Hugh Speight, who managed Speight’s from 1940 until 1969. As a child, she accompanied her father on his Sunday inspections of the plant, entering from the Dowling Street end, where the boilers kept the place toasty.

“I remember the tuns [storage containers] were like great big swimming pools full of beer,” she says. “And around the back they had the tankers, which would take beer all around Southland and Central Otago.”

Michael says that few realise just how popular Speight’s was.

“It was probably New Zealand’s most well-known brewery between the two wars – not world famous, but it had a really strong footprint in New Zealand and was well known in Australia because they used to send beer off to competitions there.”

Speight’s has weathered plenty since, including a threat in the 1980s from owner Lion Breweries to shutter the brewery, but the brand bounced back. Following the February 2011 Canterbury earthquake, when Lion shifted its Christchurch beer production to Auckland and Dunedin, the Rattray Street site underwent a two-year, $40 million redevelopment, including a new brew house, tank farm and offices, plus seismic strengthening.

Yet much of the original brewery survives – the revamp retained the curved façade of the old cellar building, among other features – and you can’t deny Speight’s prerogative to accentuate its history. Others that play up provenance are on more contestable ground, however.

“A lot of New Zealand brewing history has been ‘back-engineered’, if you like,” says Michael.

Why do brewers feel the need? Michael points out that European ‘green bottle’ lager brands such as Carlsberg have typically marketed their long histories. “It sets a baseline; people think it’s important.” Emphasising longevity is also a response to the rising craft beer scene.

“It’s a differentiator against everything that’s new. It’s saying ‘Trust us, we know what we’re doing’,” says Michael.

And if you can look past some of the ‘long-bow’ marketing, there’s a lot to like about the efforts of modern New Zealand beer brands to bring heritage into play. When DB redeveloped Monteith’s Greymouth brewery in 2012, for example, it did a nice job of evoking a broader, rough-sawn West Coast history. Meanwhile, Emersons, a Dunedin craft beer label that was bought by the renamed Lion Nathan in 2012, now occupies a terrific new brick brewery that evokes

1 Deidre Wilson is the daughter of Hugh Speight, who ran Speight’s from 1940 until 1969. She is photographed next to a likeness of her ancestor and Speight’s co-founder James Speight.

2 Former maturing tanks are now used to collect bore water at Speight’s.

3 A copper kettle for boiling up the wort at Speight’s brewery.

4 Speight’s brewery at 200 Rattray Street, Dunedin. IMAGERY: ALAN DOVE

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an old locomotive shed, with railway motifs scattered throughout. Brewer Richard Emerson’s father George was a notable trainspotter who was instrumental in reopening the historic Taieri Gorge Railway.

“Richard loves trains, too,” says Michael. “It’s all very genuine and part of the family’s story.”

Other notable examples in which brewing has been effectively yoked to heritage include Cassels & Sons Brewing in the revamped historic tannery site in the Christchurch suburb of Woolston, and Auckland’s long-running Galbraith’s Alehouse, which occupies the 1912 former Grafton Public Library.

In a different vein, The Laboratory is a modernday brewing phoenix that arose after the Canterbury earthquakes shuttered the Twisted Hop brewpub in downtown Christchurch.

Sited in Lincoln, the brewhouse and restaurant are built of materials salvaged from historic and quakestruck buildings, including sarking from a demolished church and vintage pine trusses that were once part of Christchurch’s original 19th-century brewery, Wards.

And then there’s the Shakespeare, where Steve Wood is also engaged in a type of resurrection. Given ongoing disruption to the pub from the construction of the City Rail Link and the fact that Lion Nathan has dibs on five of eight taps for a bit longer, Steve is currently limited to brewing once a week.

But in the fullness of time, he’ll have that quirky 1980s brewing system singing its old song.

“All I can do is try to make some good beer and put this amazing historic place back on the map,” he says.

RETURN TO CONTENTS

“If you look at [beer brands] that have provenance stories, they’ve lasted a lot better in New Zealand than ones that

DRIVING HISTORY

During a weekend spent using the Taranaki Wars driving tour app, photographer Ann Bremner discovers that signs of prior habitation and conflict are all around. She reflects on some of the sites she found most resonant

WORDS AND IMAGERY: ANN BREMNER

Two tours are available on Heritage Taranaki’s free-to-download Taranaki Wars driving tour app (Apple and Android); the first covers the First Taranaki War (1860-61) and the second the Second Taranaki War (1863-65). These tours cover important places and events in the region between 1860 and 1881 that shaped the Taranaki of today.

FIRST TARANAKI WAR TOUR SITES 1 Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary’s 2 Marsland Hill – The Barracks 3 Te Pou Tūtaki 4 Bell Block Stockade 5 Mahoetahi 6 Waitara River Mouth 7 Camp Waitara 8 Waitara Military Cemetery 9 Te Kohia Pā 10 Puketākauere 11 Matarikoriko 12 Number 3 Redoubt 13 Te Ārei 14 Omata Stockade 15 Waireka

SECOND TARANAKI WAR TOUR SITES 1 St Patrick’s Redoubt (Poutoko) 2 Pahitere Redoubt 3 Wairau Ambush 4 St Andrew’s Redoubt 5 Kaitake 6 Ahuahu 7 Hauranga Pā and Timaru Redoubt 8 St George’s Redoubt and Katikara 9 Okato Township and Stony River Redoubt 10 Warea Redoubt 11 Sentry Hill

TARANAKI CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST MARY’S: TOUR 1, SITE 1 To me, the first site on the tour, Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary’s, feels different from other churches I’ve visited – as if it has been around longer, seen more and survived more but still remains strong and elegant, defying the march of time.

Consecrated in 1846, St Mary’s is a quiet place that somehow rejects the bustle of the city of New Plymouth outside its gates. While the interior of the church is closed for seismic strengthening when I visit, the building and its gardens draw me into the story of an emerging colonial world fraught with tension, fear and discord. The short epitaphs written on the memorial stones pique my curiosity, while a stark wooden memorial stands blank, its details long gone – at odds with its stone neighbours. A sub-menu on the app directs me to a remote corner of the churchyard where six Waikato Māori warriors were buried after the battle at Mahoetahi (1860) in recognition of their great bravery.

I feel that nothing is more evocative of past cultural attitudes than the location of this grave and memorial; while the intent was genuine, it feels like a disservice to place them here – segregated and easily overlooked.

MARSLAND HILL: TOUR 1, SITE 2

Overlooking St Mary’s, Marsland Hill is just a short walk, so I head uphill from the church. This was a fortified area where imperial troops established themselves in 1855 as tensions in the area increased. Marsland Hill is known by Māori as Pūkākā, after an early pā on this site, and when I visit it’s easy to see why the location was chosen for the pā and the fortified military area

that followed. Views sweep far and wide over land and sea. Prefabricated corrugatediron-clad buildings were shipped from Melbourne and used at Marsland Hill for barracks. All were dismantled in 1891, but one of these buildings was relocated to Mt Taranaki by sledge to provide visitor accommodation. The Camphouse – New Zealand’s oldest prefabricated, corrugatediron-clad building – is still sited there today (pictured above).

TE POU TŪTAKI/ FITZROY’S POLE: TOUR 1, SITE 3

Te Pou Tūtaki/FitzRoy’s Pole now stands surrounded by the trappings of the modern world: petrol stations, chain stores and traffic lights.

The original pou, however, was erected in 1849 by the Puketapu hapū of Te Ātiawa chief Te Whaitere Katatore. Placed on the northern boundary of Governor Robert FitzRoy’s 1844 purchase, it marked the northern limit of European settlement in New Plymouth. The environment of land rights and purchases of the period can be confusing to the modern mind. I found the sub-menu ‘The New Plymouth Purchase’ helped me to understand the difficulty of obtaining a clear licence for expansion and purchase faced by the officials of the day.

TE ĀREI: TOUR 1, SITE 13

To me, Te Ārei feels like a very special place, seemingly untouched by the modern world, where native ferns, trees and bird life abound.

But nowhere else do I also feel the intensity of the struggle for Taranaki more than when I visit here. This is where, under the methodical tactics of Major-General Thomas Pratt, which included using a series of redoubts to steadily approach Te Ārei, the first phase of the Taranaki War ended on 18 March 1861 with an uneasy truce.

WAITARA RIVER MOUTH AND WAITARA MILITARY CEMETERY: TOUR 1, SITES 6 AND 8

The Waitara River flows from the highlands of eastern Taranaki, and near the sea splits the town of Waitara in two.

I learn from the app that after Wīremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke and about 600 Te Ātiawa returned from the Kāpiti Coast in 1848, four Māori pā were located here, and a farming community was established.

In 1859 when land here was offered for sale to Governor Gore Browne, the sale was vehemently opposed by Te Rangitāke, but the governor rejected the opposition and on 22 February 1860 declared martial law after surveyors were blocked by those who stood against the sale. War broke out on 17 March 1860 as troops moved in, burned local pā and established a strong military presence in the area.

Today the area is home to a walkway fringed by tidal wetlands that meander toward the sea, with views to Mt Taranaki. The sight of birds wandering leisurely about seems incongruous with the magnitude of the events that occurred here.

Just up the road lies the Waitara Military Cemetery. I learn that many who were killed in the battles were buried where they fell, and some were never recovered, so this cemetery also serves as a memorial to lives lost.

A monument was erected here in 1915 to recognise the soldiers who were killed while attacking Puketākauere Pā, and there are other memorials recognising Pākehā soldiers and settlers who lost their lives in local battles during the First Taranaki War.

PAHITERE REDOUBT: TOUR 2, SITE 2 Although Pahitere is now on private land, it can be seen and appreciated easily from both the main and side roads. This redoubt, created on the site of an old pā of the same name, was established here by military settlers in March 1864, at the same time as St Andrew’s Redoubt, a little further south, was being reoccupied. Evidence of fortification and earthworks is still clearly visible, even from a distance.

WAIRAU AMBUSH: TOUR 2, SITE 3 Oākura feels like any other modern beachside town on a summer’s day; ice cream, swimming, sandcastles and surf lifesavers are the norm. Two streams – the Wairau and the Waimouku – emerge to the beach and head out to sea, with no sign of the harsh and bloody past of this place still being evident today.

Occupation by British forces of Tātaraimaka, to the south of New Plymouth, in April 1863 was a provocative act destined for a response: a Māori retort in 1863.

As soldiers from St George’s Redoubt at Tātaraimaka were taking one of their own to New Plymouth for court martial, they stopped to water their horses at a stream. The ambush that followed left nine dead; only one soldier, although wounded, managed to escape.

Repercussions were immediate, with steps to confiscate Māori land beginning immediately following the ambush.

KAITAKE AND AHUAHU: TOUR 2, SITES 5 AND 6

The land around Kaitake is rugged, steep and bush covered, and looking up toward the area from the bottom of the hill you can appreciate the defensive value of the hills. Something of a fortress, with a series of pā running along the bush line, the area was not brought under military control until 1864, after considerable effort. Of all the places on the tour, Ahuahu felt the most ominous to me, with the drive being steep, narrow and shrouded in trees. The arrival at the site of a wedding party filled with excitement and joy did little to dispel my sense of unease in this place.

Pahitere, Wairau and Kaitake are in the rohe of Taranaki iwi, Ngā Mahanga a Tairi hapū. RETURN TO CONTENTS

FIGHTING THE good fight

With an architectural heritage defined by a mish-mash of styles, Buenos Aires, some have argued, has no heritage of its own worth saving. A group of determined activists, however, thinks otherwise

Buenos Aires has always been easy to define: a city of wide boulevards and neatly demarcated barrios (neighbourhoods) suffused with European flavour but with a sultry Latin feel. Sufficiently sophisticated to be one of the world’s greatest cities, but with enough of a gritty backstory to be interesting.

Pinned to the banks of the River Plate, BA, as it’s often called, is probably best known for being home to the world’s sexiest dance, steaks so big you almost have to unhinge your jaw and a dizzying array of architectural styles, from European Colonial and Art Deco to Neo-gothic and Rioplatense Baroque.

“Walking around the streets of BA is like a Who’s Who of styles, features and architectural follies,” says my guide Esteban. “It’s beautiful but also slightly confusing.” He isn’t kidding. Posh Recoleta swells with upscale

1 The ‘living wall’ that forms the letters BA is a visitor drawcard in the heart of the Argentinian capital. 2 Casa Rosada, or the Pink House, is the home of the Argentinian president. It was made famous as the location of Eva Peron’s renowned speech. 3 Historic San Telmo’s streets are best visited on a Sunday when the market sets up (in the background).

Georgian houses, hotels and old money (not to mention a famous cemetery where Argentina’s favourite daughter, Eva Peron, is buried), while in historic San Telmo, the battered Baroque buildings and weathered pastelcoloured apartment blocks lay empty for years following a bout of yellow fever in the 19th century.

Today, the hipsters have moved in, carving trendy bars, restaurants and boutiques into the bones of these classic old buildings. And no trip to BA would be complete without visiting La Boca, one of the city’s oldest and possibly most colourful barrio, which appears to have been decorated by a madman armed with tins of paint. To unravel how BA inherited its mish-mash of elegant and not-so-elegant edifices, you have to follow the money. “From the 1800s, beef and grain exports helped to forge an alliance with the British Empire,” says Esteban.

1 The colourful cobbled backstreets of San Telmo. 2 The old and new rub shoulders in downtown BA. 3 Basta de Demoler (Stop the Demolition) protests in downtown BA. IMAGE: SUPPLIED 4 Basta de Demoler occupies the courtyard of a BA church threatened with demolition. IMAGE: SUPPLIED

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“Ordinary citizens must protect their heritage now for future generations”

The result was an oligarchy with deep pockets that could afford to hire the best architects in the world to stamp its marks on the city in the form of Victorian pavilions and Neoclassical palaces.

With work so abundant and living conditions good, a tsunami of immigrants, mainly from Italy and Spain, but also from France, Germany, Austria and Poland, arrived with dreams of becoming ‘as rich as an Argentinian’. These homesick migrants carried the seeds of the European avant garde – Art Nouveau, eclecticism and modernism – with them, shaping the buildings in which they lived and worked.

But then life – whether in the form of poor economic decisions, political instability or the changing fortunes of export commodities – intervened, and by the 1950s, Argentina’s economy had hit the ropes, never quite bouncing back to its earlier financial glory.

Which hasn’t worked out so well for the city’s stunning architectural legacy.

“There’s neither the money nor the will to preserve heritage buildings,” says Santiago Pusso, a musician and founder of Basta de Demoler (Stop the Demolition), a grassroots group of activists that has been responsible for saving several landmark BA buildings and public spaces in recent years.

“Because of the many different styles of buildings, many copied from Europe, some architects argue this city doesn’t have a real architectural heritage and therefore the buildings have no real value. So there is a real culture of tearing them down.”

Santiago, who teaches singing at the city’s prestigious conservatory as well as to deprived children in an innercity slum, became interested in his city’s heritage in 2005 when he noticed some of BA’s metro stations being renovated and their heritage tiles removed.

“I contacted the authorities, who weren’t interested in saving the stations, so I wrote letters to the papers, and ordinary citizens started becoming interested.” Initially the strategy was to protest outside metro stations, and their actions were so successful that Santiago estimates the group saved around 30 stations from being ‘modernised’.

It wasn’t long before Basta de Demoler was getting involved in preserving other buildings, including the historic Petit Hotel in Recoleta, a gracious 1920s hotel that developers wanted to tear down and replace with a 10- to 12-storey building.

“Not only would it have destroyed the character building, it would also have been out of keeping with the rest of the neighbourhood, where buildings are usually not more than three or four floors,” says Santiago.

Handily, one of the members of Basta de Demoler is a lawyer, and this time the group took their fight to court – a David and Goliath fight that saw them win.

“The developers had to keep the hotel’s façade and only make it three rather than 10 storeys.”

The group – which numbers anywhere between seven and 10 members – employed the same tactics with Teatro Picadero, a 1920s theatre that had defied the military dictatorship of 1981 by staging what were seen as subversive plays. This time they got actors and celebrities involved in their legal fight, and once again they won. Since then the group has fought around 20 battles, including last year stopping the erection of a 20-storey building next to the Santa Catalina Church, which was built in 1745 and is one of the city’s best remaining examples of colonial-era architecture.

Not only would the proposed development have affected the foundations of the historic church, it would also have ruined its view and blocked its sun.

The group’s success came in spite of the government hitting the group, and Santiago, with a US$3 million lawsuit in 2014 for blocking the construction of a new subway station under Plaza Alvear, a landscaped 19th-century park.

Basta de Demoler argued that the subway station, near the 1732-built Recoleta Church, would ruin an historic park, protected by law, which is also the site of a popular weekend fair. They were successful and the city had to relocate the subway stop. But it obviously irked the city because, shortly afterwards, the fines were handed down. “It was to try and smash us, to show off their power and make an example of us. They know we have no money to pay this fine and luckily so far they haven’t put us in jail.” If Santiago has a message for Kiwis, it’s to keep fighting the good fight.

“Ordinary citizens must protect their heritage now for future generations. When people band together to fight, that’s when they have more of a chance of being heard and of having an impact.” RETURN TO CONTENTS

MAKING IT WORK

Community action to save heritage buildings is nothing new in Aotearoa, but Glen Hazelton, Heritage New Zealand Director Organisational Development, says we tend not to see public activism on a scale or style as practised by Basta de Demoler.

“The way the RMA [Resource Mananagement Act 1991] is structured here really discourages public activism,” says Glen. “For example, if groups take on developers and lose, they can often end up with financial penalties. And when you’re going up against a developer with deeper pockets than the average community group, that can dampen down people’s willingness to go to battle to save heritage buildings.”

Instead, Kiwis tend to focus more on positive engagement with local councils and getting involved in the process through legal avenues. Or they’ll find the resources to buy buildings in order to save them.

“This is when the Kiwi number eight wire culture comes into play, that getting involved and figuring out how we can make it work. A good example of this is Dunedin’s Warehouse Precinct, where a number of individuals purchased at-risk buildings to prevent their demolition.” n