John Hancock | Feature
HAWKES BAY HANCOCKS By Charmian Smith
A
fter 51 vintages John Hancock, one of New Zealand’s most experienced winemakers, is starting a new venture, Hancock and Sons. He tells Charmian Smith about this enterprise and reflects on his past ones. Hailing from South Australia, John Hancock joined Auckland wine producer Delegats in 1979, as one of the few fully qualified winemakers in New Zealand at the time. “That was in the days of sugar and water which was an absolute no no in Australia - sugar and water and grape skins essentially - you only needed half an acre of grapes and you could make a million bottles of wine!” he said with a laugh. Mūller Thurgau, about 45% of grape plantings at the time, was the best variety. “Well-made Muller Thurgau in those days was pretty good wine, a much better entry level wine than we had in Australia which would have been made from
sultana or doradillo or palomino.” In Australia riesling was at the top of the tree, and Leo Buring, with whom he started his career, was one of the best producers, he said. Like a handful of other young Australian-trained winemakers of his generation, he set about improving the quality of New Zealand wine. His early chardonnays from 1981 and 1982 won gold medals and trophies. “That was Gisborne Chardonnay - the fruit came from Dennis Irwin [of Matawhero]. We hadn’t ventured into barrel fermentation at that stage. It was fermented in stainless steel like you would a clean dry white then bunged into barrels.” However, a trip to Europe opened his eyes to barrelfermented chardonnay, and when he moved to the fledgling Morton Estate he developed New Zealand’s first commercial barrelfermented chardonnay, Morton Estate Black Label Chardonnay 1984. Other winemakers, such as Michael Brakovich at Kumeu River
and Paul Mooney at Mission were also experimenting with barrel fermentation, but he was the first to commercialise it, he said. It put Morton Estate on the map and they established a big vineyard on river terraces at Marakaeko in Hawkes Bay. Then in 1993 he and two other partners bought land in the newly developing Gimblett Gravels in 1993 and established Trinity Hill. There had been a dispute over the area because Fraser Shingle had bought land to extract gravel, but the winegrowers, led by Alan Limmer of Stonecroft and John Buck of Te Mata, fought the resource consent and won. Now the Gravels is an acclaimed wine subregion because of its gravelly soils and warm climate. At Trinity Hill John continued with fine chardonnay, developed syrah and other unusual varieties such as tempranillo, touriga and marsanne. His Homage Syrah was much admired and sought after. However, after a company restructure John was shunted into an ambassadorial role. “I still had a small shareholding
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