Winepress - September 2024

No sign of cracking

Stewart Maclennan was asked at his job interview if he was an egg. He went on to prove he’s not.

KAT PICKFORD

LIKE MANY vignerons, Stewart Maclennan never planned for a career in wine. But unlike most in Marlborough, he’s been making wine for the same company since his first vintage, 21 years ago. That was in 2003 at Marlborough Valley Cellars in Riverlands, a joint-venture winery developed by the pioneers of some of the region’s most widely known and respected labels: Astrolabe, Jules Taylor, Kim Crawford and Saint Clair.

Looking around at the pipes and tanks in the cellar where he was interviewed, Stewart, who was 19 at the time, didn’t have the faintest clue about how wine was made, or what a wine harvest was. “I was hired by [the late] Pete McConway and when I told him I didn’t know what any of the cellar equipment was, he asked ‘Well, are you an egg?’ to which I replied ‘I’d like to think I’m not an egg’, and he said ‘Cool, we can teach you what this stuff is, as long as you’re not an egg’.”

Stewart made his vintage debut on lees filtration, and the buzz of the cellar at vintage had an instant impression on him. “I loved the work. Harvest is an exciting time of year, there’s this atmosphere of creativity, hard work, fun and ridiculousness all underpinned by this very complicated, technical process.”

Travel to Mexico, England, south-east Asia and Australia followed, with trips back to Marlborough at vintage to top up the bank account. By 2007, broke and tired of his subsistence lifestyle, Stewart accepted a fulltime position as cellar foreman at the newly built Saint Clair winery in Riverlands. “I knew I loved the work, the company, the people, I’d had a lot of experience working in a whole range of different jobs by that stage and realised what we had in Marlborough was pretty special,” he says.

As a keen musician who studied music in his hometown of Nelson, he was quick to find the similarities between the two crafts. “It’s nice to have this creative endeavour where we’re making something collaboratively that’s not there to last, it’s there to be enjoyed and it’s kind of subjective.”

Like many of the early wineries, Saint Clair was going

through a period of rapid growth at the time, he says. He was “lucky enough” to work alongside some of the industry’s stalwarts, including Matt Thomson, Hamish Clark, Glenn Thomas and Alana McGettigan, “fantastic winemakers and mentors”, who encouraged his development. As his skills and experience grew, he moved up through the ranks and took on a variety of winemaking roles, culminating in one of two senior Saint Clair winemaker roles in 2015.

Winemaking has also opened doors for study and travel, with vintage experiences in Austria, Australia, France, Italy and the US and sales trips to some of Saint Clair’s 70-plus export countries.

With its strong focus on growth and improvement, Stewart continues to feel challenged in his role with the family-owned company. “I’ve always had the belief that if I stop growing, then it’s time to move on,” he says.

“With seven different roles over 20 years in a place that’s constantly evolving, I’ve had no choice but to push myself and continually develop both as a winemaker and as an individual.”