Winemaker takes on Tohu

BY MICHAEL BERRY

The new chief executive of Tohu Wines says taking the job feels like returning home after more than a decade on the other side of the Whangamoa Saddle.

Mike Brown's first job in the wine industry was during vintage at a Vavasour vineyard in the Awatere Valley.

Now he has come full circle as the chief executive of Tohu Wines, whose flagship vineyard is also in the Awatere.

Mr Brown finished a decade as chief winemaker and general manager at Waimea Estates in January and spent the six months before his new appointment as "a gentleman exec", he said.

The father-of-two wanted some time out to be involved in the process of building his new home in Nelson, which is still being completed, he said.

The time off meant he took the reins at the start of the company's financial year and after the company's restructure.

Tohu Wines is completely owned by Wakatu Incorporation, after it bought out the Motueka-based Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust and Wi Pere Trust of Gisborne three weeks ago for an undisclosed amount.

Wakatu is a private company owned by Maori from the top of the South Island and based in Nelson.

Mr Brown will continue living in Nelson and will drive to work at Tohu's offices in Riverlands two times a week. The rest of the time he will be working out of Wakatu Incorporation offices in Nelson, he said.

He joined the company just in time for the bottling of the 2010 vintage.

Mr Brown enjoyed watching the bottling without the stress of being winemaker, he said.

"After 22 vintages, I'm pleased to put my feet under the desk and enjoy autumn ... coming from a production background, I have a lot of sympathy for what they do."

He was looking forward to concentrating fully on the management side of the wine business, especially the challenge of marketing alongside other Wakatu-owned products like Aotearoa Seafoods greenshell mussels, he said.

The two companies were marketing both products as a complementary package for overseas suppliers.

However, he could not shake the winemaking bug so easily and still has a few Nelson-based aromatic boutique wine labels that he made from contract fruit as a hobby.

The hobby should be hard to shake for a man who won five trophies and more than 30 gold medals for his wines in the past 18 months at Waimea Estates.

He is also chairman of Nelson Winegrowers, with one year left in his fifth and final term.

He was attracted to Tohu Wines because it was "like a big family business", he said.

"Working not for the sake of avarice and greed, but for all the good things that Wakatu do with the development of young people and scholarships; I feel like I'm working for a purpose."

Wakatu Incorporation chief executive Keith Palmer said the company has a scholarship programme to educate members of the next generation of top of the south Maori so they can manage the business in the future.

Wakatu is run by Pakeha like Mr Brown because they are the best people for the job, but Wakatu is a family-owned company and would like to be managed by family members, he said.

Tohu Wines was established in 1998 as the first Maori-owned winery, and has vineyards in Marlborough, Nelson and Gisborne. The company produces about 80,000 cases of wine a year, with 80 per cent of this exported under its two labels, Kono and Tohu, mostly to North America and Australia.

The company had current wine stock and was still allocating wine to markets, Mr Brown said.

The company produced less juice than it needed to fill demand for wine and bought juice as required to augment the Kono brand, he said.

The company would be looking at increasing production of its Kono brand as export markets in Asia and North America grew, Mr Brown said.

A new Nelson-based brand was also being planned, he said.

- The Marlborough Express