Winepress - October 2024

Call of the outdoors

Young supermarket worker Wiremu Matthews was looking for a change, and he found it in Marlborough’s vineyards

KAT PICKFORD

WHAT BEGAN as a short trip to Marlborough to attend a family wedding 20 years ago, resulted in the start of a new chapter for Wiremu Matthews when he promptly fell for the outdoors lifestyle that the region is renowned for.

Wiremu, who had grown up in Southland and moved with his mother to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory when he was 12, had been working in a supermarket before flying to Marlborough to celebrate his father’s wedding.

After the long hours spent working indoors, the 19-yearold took the opportunity to try something different: working for his dad’s wife, who had a vineyard contracting business. “I really enjoyed being outside, the physicality of the work, and meeting people from all over the world. Home must have been calling because I ended up staying and I haven’t left.” He started out doing the usual summer jobs in the vineyard – wire lifting, bud rubbing and canopy thinning. Then he got into apple and cherry picking in the lull before harvest. After a couple of years working as a horticultural contract labourer, he picked up a casual winter job at Jackson Estate, which led to a permanent vineyard assistant gig, then a machine operator role in 2008. “Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the pioneers of viticulture in Marlborough, such as Geoff Woollcombe

who was involved in the development of Jackson Estate’s vineyards in 1988 and only stepped down as viticulturist in 2018.” After more than a decade in the industry, Wiremu decided to fortify his practical knowledge and skills, studying Levels 3 and 4 in Horticulture through the Industry Training Organisation in 2019.

The next year, while juggling parenthood and part-time study with his full-time role, he was promoted to vineyard manager, responsible for Jackson Estate’s 50 hectares of vines. The early flowering, combined with a -3C frost in September that year was a baptism by fire, he says.

“On the Homestead Block on Jackson’s Road, frost is rarely an issue, with a natural katabatic wind pushing all the cold air out to sea,” Wiremu says. “Like everyone, we’d been watching the forecast, and we weren’t expecting it to get as cold as it did. I was up all night watching the temperature gauge and when it dropped 10C in an hour and was dead calm, my stomach dropped too.” As a result of the frost yield was reduced by half compared to the previous year, he says. “That’s horticulture for you, we do as much as we can to manage the risks, but ultimately we’re at the whim of Mother Nature.” Another challenge was managing the rising cost of vineyard labour, driven by ever-increasing demand with vineyard development, he says. “Winter pruning is our single biggest operating cost, so we’ve been running trials in the vineyard, looking at how vine health and productivity compares with various pruning techniques in an effort to become more efficient and reduce that pressure.”

Despite the hurdles, seeing the finished result in the winery each year was immensely satisfying.

“Vintage is my favourite time of year, I love helping out in the winery. One of the advantages of working for a small company is being able to see the process through, from the vineyard to the end.”

“We do as much as we can to manage the risks, but ultimately we’re at the whim of Mother Nature.” Wiremu Matthews