Beer's the name and wine is the game

Beer into wine - it's a turn of phrase that always gets a laugh whenever recently arrived Mount Maunganui resident Sean Beer tells people his job.
Sean is a winemaker who took the plunge and started his own label Volcanic Hills, a wine inspired by New Zealand's ancient volcanic landscapes.
It was the first of two recent life-changing decisions - the other was the decision by Sean and wife Jo to shift to Tauranga.
He describes Volcanic Hills, a boutique range of wines into its second vintage, as a tectonic collision between him and another winemaker and business partner Brent Park.
Making wine is the sort of job where you do not need to live near the vineyard and winery, so long as you are there for the autumn harvest and key stages in the production process.
It made the shift to Tauranga in June easier for the Beers and their two sons. They already had strong links to the Bay's lifestyle capital through their parents and friends.
With the shift behind them, they are now into the hard graft of getting Volcanic Hills on to the palates of wine buffs from Taupo to Whangarei.
There are no short cuts to promoting their savignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir wines. To illustrate this, they were one of the stallholders at Saturday's inaugural Little Big Markets next to Zespri's head office on Maunganui Rd, although the lack of a liquor licence meant they had to point potential customers in the direction of a wine shop across the road.
And although they are producing in boutique quantities - a total of 800 cases - their eyes are wide open to the realities of a tough market place. Prices for the hand-crafted wines are being kept at about a realistic $20 for the whites and $27 for the pinot noir. A further 200 cases of pinot gris will hit the market next month.
The chardonnay grapes are grown in Hawke's Bay, the savignon blanc and pinot gris in Marlborough and pinot noir in Central Otago.
Sean has an impressive wine-making heritage, serving his apprenticeship overseas before spending five years with Oyster Bay. And it's a family business in the true sense of the word with Jo helping out with secretarial tasks.
Finding a distinctive name in a crowded marketplace was one of the tougher jobs faced by the winemakers. They finally settled on Volcanic Hills as one of the defining characteristics of New Zealand, with legendary peaks like Ngauruhoe, Tarawera, Rangitoto and Tauranga's iconic extinct volcano, Mauao.
Now the Beers are looking forward to getting involved in Tauranga's community, particularly fashion and the arts.