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Industry Pioneer Forging a path for the love of fine wines SOPHIE PREECE
HÄTSCH KALBERER was 22 when he rejected the church and Swiss military service, unable to identify with either. “I just wanted to clean up all the things I didn’t like,” says the iconic Marlborough winemaker, four decades on. Such quiet non-conformity rather defines Hätsch’s role in New Zealand’s wine industry, starting at Matawhero in 1982, when his wine passion and palate impelled founder Denis Irwin to ignore a glaring lack of formal qualification. By 1986, Hätsch was running the cellar at Matawhero, and by the early ‘90s he had joined Georg and Ruth Fromm to plant an extraordinary vineyard of reds amid Marlborough’s burgeoning sea of Sauvignon Blanc. In the years since, he has grown Fromm’s enviable reputation for fine wines, including Pinot Noir, Malbec and Syrah, along with a Riesling Spätlese that draws hoards of Millennials at the Marlborough Wine & Food Festival. Going against the grain is not about being arrogant, or preaching a new way, says Hätsch with gentle certainty. “You just do things you believe in.” And for him there’s simple motivation: “The whole thing I have been doing for the last 38 years comes out of appreciating fine wines.” Hätsch grew up in the east of Switzerland, just 10 minutes’ drive from the Fromm family’s winery in Malans, although he and Georg didn’t cross paths during several vintages worked in the village. Hätsch’s love of wine was indulged when he quit compulsory military service in 1977, was subsequently taken to military court, then swiftly sacked from his office bound Government job. The courts eventually found his dismissal unlawful, but by then Hätsch was happily self-employed, spending two thirds of his time contracting back to the department that fired him, and the remaining third travelling, doing an annual vintage, and buying interesting wines.
20 / Winepress June 2020
“The whole thing I have been doing for the last 38 years comes out of appreciating fine wines.”
Meanwhile, the Cold War was increasingly concerning him. “I thought, ‘I need a bit of distance from that’. I honestly thought that some madman in power would eventually push the red button.” In January 1982, he bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand (“anything further away would have been on the way home again”) with a plan to move on to work in Australia. He set off for Hawke’s Bay to explore winery opportunities, “but of course there was no one just waiting for someone with no qualifications”. He ended up in an apple orchard instead, first as a picker and then in the packhouse, and at the end of the season found a vineyard pruning job. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but nor did anyone else there”, says Hätsch, describing New Zealand viticulture as “rather poor” at that time. Meanwhile, he visited wineries throughout the North Island, including Matawhero in Gisborne, where his screeds of tasting notes worked as a foot in the door. Denis Irwin, who died in April this year, came to Hawke’s Bay to meet with him and Hätsch recalls the two sitting on apple boxes talking about wine, and Matawhero’s need for a European palate. “He just gave me a chance,” says Hätsch. “It was quite a learning curve, but hugely exciting to be part of the beginning of our industry as we know it today.” Hätsch stayed at Matawhero for nine and a half years, starting as a “cellar rat” in August 1982, working his first vintage in 1983, and in charge of the winemaking
Hätsch Kalberer
