Ship O’ the Old Block

Man O’ War Vineyards head BERRIDGE SPENCER talks to GERRIE LIM about his Waiheke winery, his family’s naval history and why he’s living in Pok Fu Lam

HE SITS POSING WITH A GLASS of his own wine, a few fretful glances underscoring his admission that he gets nervous when photographed. Then, from the stereo system emanates the sound of a grizzled old Chicago bluesman – Sonny Boy Williamson, I’m
guessing – and an ease gradually sets in. And not unexpectedly so, since we’re inside The Flying Winemaker, a wine shop located where D’Aguilar curves into Wyndham, chosen for this shoot since it not only carries his estate’s Sauvignon Blanc but also because the very name might well apply to him.

For Berridge Spencer, 41, is a frequent flyer who jets between his three main bases – his family’s business headquarters in London, his new Hong Kong domicile in Pok Fu Lam, and his winery in his native New Zealand. The latter is the breathtakingly beautiful Man O’ War Vineyards, located a 40-minute ferry ride from Auckland on picturesque Waiheke Island. It originally began as Stony Batter in 1993, from a four-hectare plot planted by his father John Spencer, one of New Zealand’s most legendary business leaders and the scion of the Caxton Paper fortune founded by his grandfather, Albert Spencer. The first vintage under the new name Man O’ War emerged in 2008.

The name itself derives from English military history, from the man-o’-war battleships, and the main red wines are labelled after famous classes of men-o’-war – such as the Dreadnought (a northern Rhonestyle Syrah) and the Ironclad (a Bordeaux style blend of mostly Cabernet Franc and Merlot). There’s also a Chardonnay called Valhalla, after that feisty Viking war cry to the Norse gods (“Valhalla, I am coming!” to quote Led Zeppelin), and a sensual blanc de blancs sparkling wine named Tulia, after Spencer’s niece and meaning gentle breeze in his mother’s native Finnish.

All this now hails from 55 hectares of vines on Waiheke itself and a further six hectares on nearby Ponui Island (population: eight; growing Pinot Gris, Malbec, Merlot and Cabernet Franc), resulting in some 30,000 cases of wine each year. Spencer flies to Waiheke every quarter but has called Hong Kong his home since May 2011, having relocated to oversee the family’s financial interests in Asia. “You’re in the centre of everything and with one flight, I can be anywhere,” he observes, and with equally Zen-cool equanimity he waxes lyrical about Man O’ War and its myriad charms.

I always like to ask people I interview this question: if you could be a wine varietal, what would you be? Which varietal reflects you best as a person?
I would say Cabernet Franc. It’s a bit shy and complex, and sort of understated but in a noble way. I think I am a bit understated – I try to work hard and do the best I can, without needing to shout about it.

Now you’ve moved to Hong Kong, as part of your family business. How does that work?
I’m now the managing director of my family’s private office, which is a globally diversified investment group. I moved here to set up the Hong Kong office, Tenzing Capital – after the famous Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Mount Everest with [New Zealander] Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. I graduated with a master’s in economics and econometrics, and previously worked at a hedge fund in Los Angeles until 1999, after which I moved to London where our global business is still based. But I now believe that the greatest opportunities for my generation lie in the Pacific Rim region and Hong Kong is an ideal base.

I understand that the name Man O’ War is relevant because you come from a family of sailors?
Yes, sailing is a big part of our lives. I did my first ocean passage when I was five years old. We sailed from New Zealand to New Caledonia – and we’ve sailed all around the world. I’ve sailed to Antarctica and we also did the Northwest Passage last year around the top of Canada. And then there’s the military history. My grandfather on my father’s side was in the Royal Navy in the First World War and served in the Mediterranean as the captain of a patrol boat. My grandfather on my mother’s side fought against the Russians in the famous Winter War of 1939-40, because he was Finnish.

Legend has it that your own wine experience goes back to a vineyard you once owned in Sonoma, in northern California.
Yes, I was living in Los Angeles and had bought some land up north, in the Knights Valley area with two other partners, and we planted vines in the late ’90s on these really steep hillsides, doing Right Bank-style Bordeaux – Merlot and Cabernet Franc. We kept that vineyard till the beginning of 2009 and sold it to focus our attention on Man O’ War, which really got started only in 2001, after I’d left California. In 1993 we had planted 10 acres of vines but it was on flat ground. It was really coming back from California, after seeing what could be done on hillsides that made me want to do hillside vineyards on Waiheke.

Wasn’t that a radical step, growing on those steep slopes, making wine in a place not really known for it?
Yes, but the real radical was my father, who had the foresight. Because at that time, back in the early ’80s when he got it started, no one wanted that land. Waiheke was very remote and people looked down on it, even though it’s so close to Auckland. It used to be a three-hour ferry ride, now it’s half an hour. People didn’t think the land was very valuable. But we did so much sailing in the Hauraki Gulf, so we were always sailing past Waiheke and, as yachtsmen, we came to love it because it’s so beautiful and we always valued it very highly.

How much actual contact do you have with the other people on your estate, given that you travel so much?
I speak to them on a weekly if not daily basis. The structure of the wine business is we’ve got three senior people – Matt Allen, who manages the vineyards, our winemaker Duncan McTavish, and our sales and marketing manager Lindsey Holcombe – who all report directly to the family, to myself. I think it’s important because we’re a family business, so we want to run our own assets. We’ve never employed a chief executive officer to run the business for us, so we don’t have an interim level of management. It’s a flat structure, not very corporate, and we can run it ourselves and stay intimately involved.

When I visited your wine estate in Waiheke, your vineyard manager Matt Allen told me that of your 76 individual vineyard sites, 43 of them are for Bordeaux blends, and so you guys will make up to 43 single-vineyard wines before blending any two. He admitted that was crazy, to actually make 43 separate wines in the hope of two going together.
Yes, I agree with Matt, I think it is madness. But to make something that’s world-class, you need to be radical and take risks. We see it as the only way that we’re going to get it right, more often than not. It’s what allows us to create classic, exotic wines that are a true reflection of our place and that can stand up with the great wines of the world. It’s about our ability to blend a great number of vineyards with similar overall microclimates and soils, but with individual mesoclimates and different soil structures across the traditional Bordeaux grape varieties, concentrating on Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

So you and Matt built the vineyards together?
Yes, we planted the first vines. Myself, him, the old manager, a mate of mine and my sister, we were down there and we all planted the first grapes together. My sister and I grew up on that farm. I spent a lot of time walking around with Matt, working out where we were going to plant the vines.

Indeed, he said you were very strategic about it, that you spent a long time trying to figure out all the plots. Sounds like a cautionary tale, doesn’t it, for any aspiring winery owner?
Yes, we looked at the weather data, trying to figure out the climate and trying to figure out which varietals would work the best. We looked at the different aspects and slopes, and made educated guesses. In the beginning, it was a lot of hit-and-miss and we made mistakes, but I think we’ve got a good balance now – we planted the whites at the top where it’s cooler and they can retain the freshness and acidity, and then we planted all the reds where it was really steep and low so they’re sheltered. There are all these things that determine where you should plant, and then you still have to get better at making better decisions. I believe that if you’re afraid of making a mistake, you’ll never do anything.