Wine pioneer who pulled the cork

By WARREN GAMBLE

George Fistonich climbs easily up the steep side of a volcanic crater in South Auckland.

From the top, the view on a clear June day takes in the peaceful shores of the Manukau Harbour and, below, a controlled riot of activity building his $30 million future.

It is a picture-perfect setting, the bold lines of a new winery taking shape in the foreground, with winter-yellowing leaves of chardonnay, pinot noir and gewurtztraminer marching away across the green floor of the Waitemokia crater in Mangere.

Not that Fistonich, the laidback founder and head of one of the country's most successful wine companies, Villa Maria, gets too misty eyed about it.

Asked if he pinches himself that he has come to oversee this when 40 years ago he was making and selling port, sherry and hock from the front gate, he smiles: "Yeah, sort of ... "

He does not finish the sentence, instead pointing out where the restaurant and lake will be, where the concerts will be held among the vines in a few years. (The winery, five minutes from Auckland airport, will start production next year with the public amenities progressively added.)

It is the 63-year-old's way - quietly deflecting questions about his own achievements on to the company he started as a 20-year-old son of a winegrower from an island off the Dalmatian coast in Croatia.

Ask how he learned the business side of what is now New Zealand's third-largest wine company with shelves full of awards and what you get is: "You just pick it up as you go."

The Weekend Herald dragged Fistonich away from the winery's original and now outdated white, stucco-walled base in Kirkbride Rd, Mangere, in a week when he has been continuing the search for a successor.

He is halfway through interviewing for a chief executive after whittling a shortlist from more than 90 applicants, including several New Zealanders keen to put their overseas experience into practice.

When the appointment is made, Fistonich will become executive chairman, concentrating on projects such as the new headquarters and the redevelopment of the company-owned Esk Valley winery, north of Napier.

The hands-on work, "wandering around vineyards", appeals to Fistonich rather than being stuck behind his old oak desk surrounded by cartons and bottles of his own and competitors' wine at Kirkbride Rd.

"Certainly the place is getting quite big and complicated, and life becomes very tied up with a lot of administration," he says.

It has also been a week in which Fistonich was nominated by London's Wine magazine as personality of the year for Villa Maria's pioneering decision to embrace screw caps instead of corks.

The company starting making the switch two years ago, one of the biggest suppliers in the world to make the move.

Fistonich says corks leave 8 to 10 per cent of wines - the figures are disputed by cork loyalists - tainted by a musty, mushroomy infection. Villa Maria says 30 to 40 per cent more wines can have their flavours dulled or oxidised by imperfect corks.

Fistonich says the decision was a risk given the traditional romance associated with corks - romance which he says was discarded by spirit producers and medicine suppliers years ago.

In the end, he says, the company's drive for quality prevailed over a flawed tradition he likens to driving a Mercedes with wooden wheels.

He estimates the move has cost Villa Maria a few thousand cases of exports to the United States, but in other countries such as the sophisticated British market it has not been a problem.

In New Zealand the change has won support from wine commentators, and Fistonich says consumer acceptance is "not too bad".

He says that where people have written to complain, the company's response about the benefits of screw caps has turned many into "missionaries".

But he can still laugh at the outraged comments which reach his desk.

One disgruntled cork fan said he was drinking Villa Maria Merlot/Cabernet for the last time: "Are you mad, or merely stupid? What next? Wine in a box?"

But the gripes are balanced by messages from wine lovers, who lament fine wines gone sour under cork and praise the company's bravery.

Fistonich has been through much harder times - the struggle to get the New Zealand palate to adapt to dry white and red varieties in the 1970s, the big business manoeuvring which forced him into voluntary receivership in 1985. He and the company emerged from it intact the next year, creditors were paid off a year later and he has outlasted the rivals of that time.

He has also kept the company in New Zealand ownership, despite periodic offers from overseas firms which have bought into all other big producers.

Through it all, living and breathing wine, does he ever get sick of it, like mechanics who don't fix their own cars, or journalists who don't write letters?

Fistonich allows himself a smile, his eyes disappear to slits. You have to keep your palate fresh with different wines, your own company's and others, he says.

But he warns that you must be careful - not because you might drink too much, but because you might get obsessed with analysis rather than enjoyment.

Generally though, he says, getting sick of the fruit of their labours is "something winemakers don't suffer from".