Twelve wineries join forces to take on the world

Robert Smith
The National Business Review / July 17, 2009

Click to open PDF of the original NBR article

The Family of 12 might sound like something out of a gangster movie, with mobsters deciding matters of life and death over plates of cannelloni in a darkened, smoke-filled room, but in reality, it is 12 of the country’s most well established wineries coming together to pool their collective skills and experience.

Formed five years ago, the Family of 12 includes six wineries from the North Island and six from the south, covering all the country’s major wine regions.

The group takes part in international roadshows, holding dinners and wine tastings targeting leading restaurateurs and upmarket independent wine retailers around the world.

Richard Riddiford, who served as the group’s inaugural chairman, said some of the criticism thrown at the group when it first formed, including concerns that the family could undermine the efforts of New Zealand winegrowers, had now subsided.

“It’s just a sign of a mature industry that there are groups of people that will work together with a common goal, and I think the rest of the industry can now see that those initial concerns were unfounded.”

Based on the 12 bottles of wine in a case, Mr Riddiford said it wasn’t always easy co-ordinating 12 strong egos, each passionate about the industry and their own brands, but that was the nature of the business and did not stop them from sharing information.

“We believe we have a collective strength that is more powerful than any single brand. When we all get together, the collective intellectual capital in the room is huge.”

Mr Riddiford added that the group was not about creating new distribution channels, with each individual brand needing to have an existing distribution set up in the US before it could join the family.

The original 12 wineries which signed up to be part of the group are all still with the organisation and after half a decade of working together, Mr Riddiford said it was no longer necessary for all 12 to take part in the roadshows.

“We are now at the point where it’s not necessary for all 12 to travel on a roadshow. We can cover markets with just four of us, because we have got enough confidence in each others’ brand to handle any situation.”

The group meets three or four times a year, and is about to meet for a mid-winter Christmas gathering. Members usually met at the various wineries and vineyards, letting each other see their latest developments in production and development and Mr Riddiford said it was also a golden opportunity to share feedback.

“One of our key performance indicators is what’s in the glass, and nobody will give you honest criticism on that level like another winemaker.”

• Kumeu River, Auckland
• Villa Maria, Auckland
• The Millton Vineyard, Gisborne
• Craggy Range, Hawkes Bay
• Palliser Estate, Martinborough
• Ata Rangi, Martinborough
• Fromm Winery, Marlborough
• Nautilus, Marlborough
• Lawson’s Dry Hills, Marlborough
• Neudorf Vineyards, Nelson
• Pegasus Bay, Waipara
• Felton Road, Central Otago

Aceon Cymbalta

Occasional posts based on Family conversations
by Nigel Greening

Mid-winter is a time for contemplation. There are over 100,000 vines to prune and I wake up each morning contemplating with some satisfaction that I’m not going to be the one pruning them.

Instead my mind has been drifting back to vintage and the richly entertaining phenomenon that is the intern. At a Family Of Twelve dinner at Kumeu River a couple of weeks ago we were swapping intern horror stories.

I don’t know what it is about owning a winery, but it seems to prompt friends, acquaintances, people you once sat next to on a plane and a host of others to email you. It generally goes something like this:

I’m sending this note about my son Aaron. He’s going through a bit of indecision right now, not sure where his next move is, and his parole officer is completely useless. So I was thinking that if he could work a few weeks in your winery/vineyard it would help him to clear his head, get a new perspective on life and help him kick the habit. What do you think?

Yours sincerely,
Ted

Wow, thanks Ted. We were just talking about running a therapy group during our busiest time of year… and, come to think of it, I don’t remember sending you my children to work at your hedge fund and demonstrate their computer skills by trading 2 billion roubles while you’re out at a long lunch.

Now I don’t want it to sound as if all interns are a liability ― some of our best friends started out that way ― but the potential for people you don’t know to wreak untold damage to your wines and vines is always something to add a little frisson to the morning coffee.

Anyway, as I said, the Family got talking about this at our last dinner together and from those conversations, here’s just a few guidelines for those thinking of applying for a job and for those who may be tempted to hire cheap labour:

1. Why we don’t let interns work in the winery any more

   “I thought this was the hose to tank 5, but I’m sure that after you blend it into the other tanks of Riesling the pink colour won’t show.”

   This one didn’t happen to one of us, but it did to one of our close friends. And, no, the colour didn’t come out.

   Having said that, a similar accident by an intern at Villa Maria several years ago led to the creation of a tank of Chardonnay and Viognier: should that be Chardier or Viogonnay? Anyway, they liked it so much they started making it as a blend. I don’t think they pay the intern a royalty, though!

2. You can kick the kid out of the city but…

   This year I went in to the smoko room in the busiest part of vintage to find one sorry individual sitting there while all were hard at work outside. I asked what was wrong.

   He lifted his head from his hands with a look of abject loss.“There’s nothing you can do. We tried everything. There’s no way out of this, I just don’t know what I can do. I’ve been wracking my brains for an answer. But I’m going to have to go.” I asked if I could do anything to help with his problem.

   “Nothing. If an iPhone is outside coverage, that’s it.”

3. Beware the ‘Heir to the Domaine’
   
   These guys usually taste your wine then respond: “It’s very Frooody, isn’t it? So, are there people out there who like to buy this sort of wine?”
   
4. Department of the bleeding obvious…
   
   Walter’s law states: “Once a forklift has raised its cargo to a considerable height, it is no longer able to leave the winery via the door through which it just entered”. However across New Zealand every vintage there are a number of interns that rediscover this useful piece of physics.
5. The molecular chef… or a flavour too far
   
   An intern at Nautilus just had to find out what Caustic Soda actually tastes like. He now knows that as well as exactly how fast you can run to a cold tap and how quickly the New Zealand emergency service can respond to calls. Unfortunately I don’t think he can taste much else these days.
6. The budding sculptor
   Judy Finn at Neudorf told me of this excellent example. A great way to demonstrate the power of Boyle’s Law is to try to pump out a wine tank without first opening the lid or some other way for air to enter. It’s pretty dramatic and converts a very expensive and useful piece of stainless steel equipment into a gigantic sculpture of a crushed beer can.

   One intern, having wasted $16,000 of the winery budget in this way was so excited that he could only think of having his photo taken with his new creation to email to all his friends. In case you wonder where they get this attitude, when said intern’s parents visited the winery some months later the first thing they wanted to do was to view the creation in question and seemed rather disappointed that their son’s greatest work had been sent to the scrap-yard.

On a more serious side, James Millton called me the other morning, (not to suggest that James is serious, just the conversation took on the rather more sombre side of contemplative). Conversation started up around his trip to Bordeaux and the UK, but swung to his local region’s situation. In Gisborne, Pernod-Ricard have recently told the vast majority of their growers that they won’t be needing any more grapes in future, thank-you-very-much. The public line is that the market has moved away from Chardonnay and the other grapes they grow in those parts, so they don’t need them any more. The truth is closer to the fact that with the glut of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, they can source most of the fruit they need and have decided to focus on in Marlborough and source it cheaper and more conveniently.

So, what are we to learn from this? Firstly, the corporate reaction to perceived market shifts. Chardonnay’s out, so let’s bale out as quick as we can. But does this mean that in Burgundy, Dominic Lafon is top grafting his Meursaults to Pinot Gris, or Anne-Claude Leflaive has switched to running a drive-through carwash? I don’t think so. Wine producers worthy of the name don’t chase marketing trends, they make them happen. If Pernod-Ricard can’t sell their Chardonnay, then, just maybe, they should think about how to make it better rather than throw the farmers who have earned them profits for the last few decades onto the scrap heap. In a region where 40% of the population are indigenous people who often don’t have the most flexible skill sets, this is a regional calamity.

There is a touch of irony in the fact that Pernod-Ricard are the largest producer of wine in New Zealand. The French are often keen to portray themselves as artisans fighting New World corporate giants, well here the boot is on the opposite foot.

Family businesses can’t work this way. They need perspectives that last decades or generations, not to the next quarterly statement and the next shareholders’ meeting. And, when things go wrong for them, rather than bale out and distance themselves from the problem, they have to dig deeper and sort it out properly. Within the Family Of Twelve, every member makes at least one Chardonnay. Come back in a couple of year’s time and we’ll still be doing it.

Cheers,

Nigel Greening for the Family of Twelve