JON MORGAN ![]()
JON MORGAN/Fairfax NZ
TE WHANGA: The 3.2 hectare woodland garden has vistas that act as ”drains”, taking cold air away from tender plantings.
The sky is a slightly unreal bluer than blue and the grass is an odd lime-green – colours from the multihued palette of television advertising.
We’re watching a Chinese television advertisement, which is giving Paddy and Sarah Borthwick’s Wairarapa farm the colourist’s special treatment – gilding nature’s hills, trees, gardens and vineyard.
yes, vineyard. It is wine that is being advertised, with the farm providing the backdrop for a lightly sketched romance between a Kiwi winemaker and a Chinese backpacker.
The enhanced blue skies and green hills herald the advertisement’s punch-line: “Enjoy the purity, taste the freshness.”
It is an example of the potency of new Zealand’s clean, green image, this time seen through the eyes of the Chinese advertising film-makers.
The wine is from four new Zealand vintners, one of them Mr Borthwick, and carries the brand Chateau Kiwi. Through this connection with the Guangzhou importers, the new Zealanders are also able to sell additional wine under their own labels.
For the Borthwicks, the transformation of their farm’s natural charms into on-screen commercial assets is an eye-opener.
“It all looked so amazing,” Mrs Borthwick says of the first time she saw the advertisement, the result of three days filming.
“It changed our view of ourselves. Suddenly, this was not just our home – a farm with a nice garden. It was something else, something with a value we hadn’t considered before. my first thought was, ‘How can we utilise that?’ ”
some months later, she is still not sure. The temptations are giving way to a greater need to preserve their privacy.
The couple recognise they have a diverse farming business with at least four income streams, capable of being improved further with the use of clever marketing.
However, it would mean more visitors and they fear the disruption this will bring.
“This is a family home. It’s noisy and untidy, as it should be, and we couldn’t change that,” she says. they have three children: Henry, 8, Sophie, 6, and Penny, 5.
in an already busy business, they are reluctant to take on more work.”We could get in a marketing guy with an idea,” Mr Borthwick says, “but how do you manage that idea? who is going to manage it?”
He says it comes down to “what is our focus – farming or tourism? I think it is farming and that includes home life. our children are only young for so long and then they’re gone.”
Paradoxically, part of his role in the family business is to be a marketer. His product is wine, and because his overseas buyers rarely make the trip to see him, he has to go to them.
His label is Paddy Borthwick, and the pinot noir, sauvignon blanc, riesling, pinot gris and chardonnay picked, pressed and bottled at the winery near Gladstone have been awarded a clutch of gold, silver and bronze medals over the past 12 years.
Mr Borthwick carries a name once synonymous with the meat industry. His grandfather, Pat, was the new Zealand manager of the British family business, Thomas Borthwick and Sons, which owned freezing works in the North and South islands and Australia. He bought Te Whanga, a farm close to the company’s Waingawa works at Masterton, in 1936, and founded an angus beef stud.
Seventy-six years later, the stud is in good heart. Mr Borthwick’s father, Robin, took over in 1972 and merged his Overshiels angus stud with the Te Whanga stud and at 75, he still keeps a close eye on the cattle.
As a teenager in the 1980s, Mr Borthwick wasn’t sure he wanted to go into farming and since nearby Martinborough was showing promise as a wine-growing region, his father suggested the study of wine. “I ummed and aahed about it and in the end I was pushed,” Mr Borthwick remembers.
He went to Roseworthy Agricultural College in Adelaide to study oenology.
What followed was 10 years of working in the wine industry in new Zealand, Europe and the United States, honing his winemaking skills. He returned to Wairarapa in 1996 to look for good grape-growing land.
again, his father stepped in, telling him about a suitable block on a terrace across the Ruamahanga River from Gladstone. “It’s a great block,” Mr Borthwick says. “It has good free-draining soils with good clay mineral content, and it is in a low-rain pocket with low humidity, which means low susceptibility to diseases.”
The wine flavours are subtly different from other regions, he says, describing the sauvignon blanc as “textural” with a “tropical lychees” flavour and the pinot noir as “red cherries”.
The sheep that are sent in to pluck the lower leaves from the vines in early summer to open the young grapes to the air and sun have their own favourites. The leaves of the chardonnay are preferred to the tougher leaves of the riesling, he has noticed.
He planted vines and built a big winery, designed for future expansion, and he and Sarah, met when she worked at Montana Wines’ Wellington office and they settled down to grow the business.
But in 2002, the family was hit by tragedy, when younger brother Seamus, who had taken over the farm, was killed in a car accident.
Mr Borthwick expanded his role to include the farm, the stud and a nationally renowned 3.2- hectare garden, begun by his grandfather in 1958.
It was a steep learning process, he says, and he made sure to have good support. Of special mention are advisers still with him, the farm manager, Greg Crombie, overseer Tim White, a Matahiwi sheep and beef farmer, and Masterton accounting firm Sellar and Sellar.
The 1600ha farm is mostly rolling limestone country and is home to 9000 romney ewes lambing at 140 per cent. Dry summers are expected and to relieve the grazing burden by 4500 to 5000 lambs, 40 per cent of the crop, are sold in one day in an on-farm sale at the end of November.
The 700 cattle’s prime job is to groom the pastures to keep them in top quality for the sheep. Stud bulls are sold at auction each year, with some one-year-old bulls going to dairy farmers wanting ease of calving in their young cows and some to beef farmers.
Two-year-old bulls are sold to beef farmers and breeders looking for good weight gains, temperament and sound structure. The sales will return to the farm this June for the first time in 28 years.
Temperament is specially targeted in breeding. Mr Borthwick remembers a bull that would calmly keep on eating when a child leapt onto its back. “It’s progeny are just the same.”
Mrs Borthwick has taken on the care of the garden, mainly a woodland planted on a terrace falling through two gullies to river flats 100 metres below. A vista created down a long lawn and another at right angles act as aerial drains, taking cold air away and allowing frost-tender plants to flourish.
Citrus fruit and avocados ripen year round and a ladyfinger banana is another regular fruiter.
Oaks and maples dominate the woodland areas, with a variety of plants underneath, including drifts of hydrangeas, giant Himalayan lilies, cyclamen, bluebells and snowdrops. Rhododendrons, camellias, limes and magnolias are also popular. Unusual trees are a rare weeping copper beech, a hornbeam, a ginkgo biloba and a big Mexican devil’s claw that attracts birds.
After an initial period of activity reshaping the garden to achieve the status of a new Zealand Gardens Trust “garden of significance”, Mrs Borthwick has cut her time to 15 hours a week and hopes to reduce that further.
She talks of “broad brushstrokes”, requiring easy maintenance. “The first layer is the big trees, then there’s a middle layer of shrubs and then, in front, are the groundcovers.” Visits are by appointment, with busloads preferred.
three years of drought from 2007 to 2010 hit the garden, which even in a good year needs constant watering from November to April, as well as the farm.
But while they were suffering, the vineyard was thriving in the hot, dry weather, intensifying the flavours of the grapes. This season, rain and sun have come at the right time to suit the pastures and the vines.
Mr Borthwick is proud of his winery workforce and the enthusiasm they show for the business. It means he can devote more time to promoting the wine at new Zealand Winegrowers-hosted trade tastings and overseas and to looking after visiting distributors.
He makes enough wine to fill 14,000 cases, of which 85 per cent is exported to China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands, Singapore, Canada, the US, Australia, Sweden and Norway.
THIS year, a special barrel of pinot noir is quietly fermenting in a corner. It is Henry’s barrel. He picked the grapes and trod them until the juices ran. It will be 10 years before he is old enough to drink it, but in the meantime, he will be allowed to dip a finger in to taste its progress.
clearly possessing a zest for life, Mr Borthwick has a big smile on his face as he discusses his business. “Fascinating” is a word he uses a lot. He likens farming to a trampoline, a description he would probably apply to life.
“You’re bouncing around, up and down, but on the whole, it’s a pleasant experience.”
Fluctuating exchange rates have “tightened the springs” in one corner of the trampoline lately, he says. “It means some markets are in danger of being uneconomic, but you don’t like to pull out and waste all that effort it took to get established. What’s the answer? do you bounce harder in that corner?” he asks.
The Chinese market is a bright spot, one of the “trampoline’s ups”. The TV advertisement was the culmination of a three-month stay in new Zealand by the Guangzhou importer.
He was hosted at Te Whanga, for a day looking over the farm and vineyard and feasting on lamb and Paddy Borthwick pinot noir.
The barbecued butterfly lamb was a new experience and he was amazed at its tenderness and flavour. “Are you selling this in China?” he asked. Then, when Mr Borthwick said he wasn’t, he replied: “Leave it with me. I’ll make it happen.”
they haven’t heard anything yet, but wouldn’t be surprised to get another visit from a film crew and for their farm to again feature in gorgeous technicolour on China’s TV screens.
which could mean renewing the discussion about making a commercial success out of their natural assets. “I love living in the country, working in the outdoors and bringing up our children here,” Mrs Borthwick says. “But I’m not sure I want to share that with the world just yet.”
– © Fairfax NZ News
Pure paradise in glorious technicolour
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