A wine romance

Jim Harre: "After three days of judging...the only thing you feel like drinking is a beer."

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Tasting wine for a living might sound like a good gig, but like any job, it has its drawbacks, although wine judge Jim Harre isn't complaining too much, writes Colleen Simpson.

The saying goes that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, but for Jim Harre, the opposite is true. "One of the things I like about wine is that the more and more I learn about it, the more I realise there is to learn," he says.

On the surface, Harre lives a kind of dream life. His role as a wine judge takes him all around the world, and when he is not jetsetting between events in the United States, Asia and Europe, he is living the good life on his country retreat, The Gates Country Lodge in North Canterbury, which he runs with his wife, Wendy.

As he says, when some men turn 50, they buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but he bought an old country lodge and set about bringing it back to life.

"The idea that you could take care of people from the moment they arrived without having a lot of staff about was really appealing."

Harre manages to combine travel, food and wine in a way that most people can only dream about.

He is the first to acknowledge that he is lucky to be living the dream, and it happened by chance.

As a young man, he chucked in his school-teaching job and went to meet a friend in a bar. That friend had just taken a job with what was to become Air New Zealand.

"It was the days of the DC10 and they were almost hiring over the phone. I thought it would be fun for 18 months."

He stayed for 32 years. During his time with the airline, he became involved with its wine-education programme, which aimed to increase flight attendants' wine knowledge to give customers a more consistent experience, and set up the Air New Zealand Wine Club.

When he was invited on a wine tour to Martinborough with a group of wine masters, it was suggested that he use his good palate to give wine judging a go.

That was 15 years ago and he has progressed from being a steward to chairing the 2010 New World Wine Awards judging panel.

In some ways, it is no surprise. Wine is in his blood. His grandfather, father and brother were all winemakers of note.

However, the idea of opening his own winery was not one he ever seriously entertained. "I think the saying goes that if you want to make a small fortune, start with a big fortune and buy a winery," he says.

"I'm sure that situation is going on a lot. A lot of people are watching what should have been the most wonderful amalgamation of all their passion and hard work fall to pieces because of the current climate. I get to dance around the edges."

He has worked on vineyards in Australia, France and New Zealand during harvest time, and although he enjoyed the work, he says it was a graft. "It's a lot of hard work. It's fun, but the hours are extraordinary and my passion in terms of wine is tasting it."

About 6000 wines are tasted in the name of competition each year, but despite his experience, he has not seen and sampled it all.

"I'm constantly surprised, but not in the 'Oh gosh, the sauvignon this year is extraordinary' way. What surprises me is the wines you would least expect to, come through as blockbusters."

The New World Wine Awards are important, he says, because they are the only ones aimed directly at the consumer.

A panel of three judges tastes the wines blind and scores them out of 20, before coming to a consensus conclusion.

The decision-making usually comes with fairly healthy debate.

And what about all that wine?

"Believe me, after three days of judging the wine awards, the only thing you feel like drinking is a beer," he says.

The awards should be viewed by shoppers not as a guarantee that they will enjoy the bottle's contents, but more that the wine is a good example of its variety for under $25.

"We are saying that this is a good wine to buy without having to know a lot of information about it."

* The New World Wine Awards are only for wines which cost less than $25 a bottle and with more than 500 cases available to buy. The results will be announced on September 20.

- © Fairfax NZ News