On the Up: Lotto’s Jason Delamore on his family’s lavender farming escape

Lotto chief executive Jason Delamore tells those he gives tours of his farm to that he'll either inspire them to own a lifestyle block or turn them off for life. Photo / Dean Purcell

Work for Lotto New Zealand chief executive Jason Delamore doesn’t stop when he’s out of the boardroom. It just has a more lavender hue.

Soon after joining Auckland Airport’s executive team in 2015, he recognised tourism was on the up.

Exposure to the industry’s “halcyon days” prompted Delamore to want to get into the business in a way that complemented his corporate career.

He and his wife, Trish Delamore, seized the opportunity when a seven-acre farm came up for sale in Auckland’s Coatesville-Riverhead area.

“It was a combination of a great location, a small business with the accommodation and farm products, but within a commutable distance from Auckland City,” Delamore said.

The main accommodation is a 1960-1970s Ian Burrow-designed house.

Next to it is a more modern barn to accommodate guests, which is surrounded by olive trees and lavender fields

Lavender Hill received a Silver Qualmark rating from Tourism New Zealand last year. Photo / Lavender Hill

For the Delamores, the farm offered an opportunity for growth.

Since buying the property, they’ve renovated the accommodation, developed the lavender fields and got the olive tree grove into better shape.

But perhaps their biggest achievement with “Lavender Hill” was creating a gin distillery.

“We started doing the journey to gin, probably about 2017. I was actively looking for ... how do we add value to the farm from a product range, what’s got good margins versus a lavender soap?” Delamore said.

“Having been at the airport and talking to the duty-free guys, I knew that boutique gin was the fastest-growing spirit in the world at the time. It has since peaked, but it was a growing category.

“I did some research on how we could bring the farm and gin together and discovered that there was a thing called lavender gin in the UK. There wasn’t one here, so then it was, how do we develop it?”

In the early days, Delamore and the team crafted their own recipes, before working with a third party to bring them to life.

Their first creation was a gin infused with lavender grown on the farm. They then progressed to a saffron gin using 100% organic New Zealand saffron, before developing a smoked honey gin using honey from the farm.

Once Delamore knew the gin had real potential, in 2023 he installed a gin still on site.

He wanted to ensure the product was made sustainably and connected to the land.

“I can make a batch of gin, with our solar power and our own water. When we have finished with the botanicals and making the gin, we just put that on the compost. So I can go through and make a whole batch of gin, just over 200 bottles, without putting anything in the rubbish bin through that process, and I thought that was quite a good story.”

Delamore believed that story helped the business get a Silver Qualmark rating last year.

Jason Delamore at his Lavender Hill gin distillery. Photo / Dean Purcell

He also put the business’ success down to the division of labour on the farm.

“Trish is great with all the accommodation and the guests, facilitating the guests and the hosting and all that kind of stuff. She’s masterful at that, which is probably why we keep getting five-star ratings on Google and Expedia and so forth.”

Meanwhile, Delamore said he does more of the farm work, product development and marketing.

Balancing that work with his role at Lotto New Zealand isn’t always easy – the days are long and hard.

“When I give farm tours ... I sort of let people know, I’ll either inspire you around owning a lifestyle block or turn you off for life,” Delamore said.

He thinks his work in the corporate world has provided a yin and yang experience. He’s in touch with his career, but also directly connected to his small business customers.

“People talk about work-life balance, but we physically had to do it.”

Delamore explained that when he knocked off on a Friday night, he had to get into farm-project mode.

“Then 7 o’clock on a Monday morning, you’ve got to be back around the exec table again, often with a few more bandages on my hands and feeling like a train wreck.”

Delamore was raised on a 10-acre farm near Bethells Beach. While he could build fences and understood the realities of farm life, getting into lavender and olive farming was still a learning curve.

That said, he enjoys the social aspect of the farm, including the network of people around to help.

He believes socialising in the suburbs requires more organisation than on the farm, where it can be as easy as the neighbours jumping the fence to come and have dinner.

His business hasn’t escaped the decline in tourism over the past few years, with accommodation bookings “falling off a cliff” during the pandemic.

But the Delamores have benefited from using the farm as a wedding venue.

There has also been a rise in international tourists from Singapore and the US over the past 12 months.

Delamore believes providing a diverse offering is another key to the business’ success.

He wants to expand the farm’s gin offering and its retail exposure, which is currently limited to high-quality restaurants and bars.

For Delamore, there are three highlights after a decade of owning and operating the farm.

“I think one was the epiphany of going from a consumer to producer – you’re actually creating something.

“Second, you know, at the end of a hard weekend, you can sit back and we live in a fantastic location. We’ve got great views of the city and you can enjoy the environment that you’ve created.

“The third is probably the reviews that we get from customers, people from around the world are enjoying the experience.

“I think that’s the those are the things that keep you going.”

As for his future, Delamore isn’t done with corporate life just yet, but can see a day where he dedicates more time to the farm.

Being in their 70s, he believes the farm was getting a bit much for its previous owners.

“We’re still a few years away from that, thankfully, but there will come a time where it’s time to hand it on to someone else.

“Our kids have just got out of university now, a couple of years off buying their first house and sort of starting to spread their wings. So they’ll spread their wings before they realise, oh that was a good thing that mom and dad had!”

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.