The man known as the father of New Zealand wine has emerged with three new brands made from Hawke’s Bay and Marlborough grapes on vineyards his family company owns.
Sir George Fistonich, 83, founded Villa Maria in the early 1960s, but after 60 years lost control of what was once a hugely successful brand.
Villa Maria’s parent company, FFWL, went into receivership in May 2021 with ANZ and Rabobank calling in the receivers over unpaid loans. The receivers then sold its assets to Marlborough wine company Indevin, prompting Fistonich to launch legal proceedings.
Two years later he has not given up on his legal battle against the receivers, but has also moved on to create new brands Oblix, Obliix and New Zealand Forest Flower.
So far, production of the new wines is boutique, with the vines producing around 3500 bottles in the last year. But, says Fistonich, the potential could be big.
“I’m too busy to retire,” he told the Herald from his Parnell home. “Wine is a passion. I love wine and I always say to people if you want to be successful in your life, do what you love doing. And to me, it’s just a love of wine.”
He has two vineyards: one on the famous Gimblett Gravels, covering about 23ha in Hawke’s Bay’s Esk Valley, and the other in Ballochdale in Marlborough’s Awatere Valley. Fistonich Family Vineyards owns 74 per cent of Ballochdale Dam Company.
Asked how he came to have those vineyards, he says: “I already owned the Esk Valley vineyard but I bought the one in Marlborough.”
His newly launched Fistonich Family Vineyards website is now “under construction”.
Many of the staff who once worked for him have returned, including chief winemaker Michelle Richardson and viticulturist Stu Dudley.
An Oblix 2022 rosé retails for $33.99 on the Black Market online wine site.
All up, he says the business produced about 300 cases from both vineyards including rose, a cabernet blend, cabernet, viognier “and of course chardonnay, and next year I’ll make a sav blanc as well”.
There’s no holding back this knight, who has been working since the age of 10.
The brands have gone into every Glengarry Wines outlet and online, and the wines will soon be in restaurants in Parnell, Ponsonby and Hawke’s Bay, he says. Parnell’s Caro’s Wine Merchants also sells it, Fistonich says.
Supermarkets are eyeing up the brands from this famous name and Farro Fresh will also soon sell it, he says.
“Essentially, it’s been incredibly successful,” he says of the startup.
Asked about the new labels with their 3-D, optical illusion-style wave pattern, Fistonich says: “It’s designed to be eye-catching. You go along the shelves in a store and look at all the labels. There are so many different styles. We wanted this to be something different.”
The name Oblix or Obliix - labels have slightly different spellings - is designed to mean “doing it differently”.
Brand consultant Ali Sundstrum named the label and brought her expertise to marketing and the creative side.
Sundstrum has worked at Moet Hennessy and was at Villa Maria Estate for just over two years previously.
Fistonich Family Vineyards’ national sales manager Kieran Woodham is Hawke’s Bay-based. He was hired in 2016 by Villa Maria as a territory manager and is delighted to be working again with Sir George.
“I’ve been here for three months. What excites me most about the job is that it’s such a privilege to work with someone like Sir George. When he asked me, it was difficult to turn him down. It’s great to be representing him again in his new venture,” Woodham says.
The new wine business launch had been well-received. Most people had heard what’s going on and were happy to support Fistonich in his new venture, and the wines are also of high quality, Woodham says.
He says the Oblix brand was originally created with only 200 cases. “Then we realised that wine was being received well and was powerful so we decided to really up production and change it to ‘Obliix’ just to highlight there’s more than one way to do it.”
He also acknowledges some potential trademark issues, which is why the “i’ was doubled. “We thought the two i’s made for a better branding story anyway,” Woodham says.
New wine produced will all have the double “i” on the label, Woodham says.
As for where the word Obliix originally came from: “It’s derived from the word ‘oblique’. It embodies the concept of veering away from the predictable path.”
So it’s extremely fitting. Fistonich, with his amazing career, could never be labelled predictable.
His latest venture follows a hard-fought legal battle - not finished yet - over the fate of Villa Maria.
Court records describe how trouble arose in 2019. ANZ Bank and Rabobank had extended substantial loans to Villa Maria and were joint security holders over its assets. They expressed concerns about the company’s governance and management, and its debt levels. At the banks’ direction, Villa Maria was restructured in accordance with the recommendations of Advisory 525, a company of which the receivers were directors. Debt of $211.9 million was to be repaid gradually as grapes were harvested and wine was made, bottled and sold.
Those close to Fistonich say he was angry about the debt being portrayed as high because in his view the value of the assets, including vineyards in Auckland, Hawke’s Bay and Marlborough, was more like $500m. Under a restructuring, Fistonich Family Wines Limited or FFWL was established as the holding company for Villa Maria.
In 2020, when the banks sought repayment, Fistonich initially agreed to a process where Villa Maria’s business and assets would be offered for sale. That resulted in a $172m offer from Scales Corp and $75m for the land from Goodman Property Trust. Fistonich wouldn’t accept sales at those prices. In the words of the High Court in 2022: “Sir George’s refusal triggered an event of default under the banks’ facility agreement.”
In May 2021, ANZ and Rabobank had receivers Brendon Gibson and Neale Jackson at Calibre Partners appointed to FFWL. They went about selling the vineyard land and business assets for $260m, allowing the banks to recover their $211.9m, receivers to keep $5.1m to protect themselves and Sir George to be paid around $40m. Indevin, a wine business, paid $190m for the Villa Maria business; Goodman Property Trust paid $75m for the Māngere land.
The same year, Fistonich, represented by Jim Farmer KC, sued the receivers in the High Court for damages, and over the way they treated him and the sale of assets, arguing that more could have been raised by selling to overseas parties such as Australian private equity interests. The court dismissed his case and allowed the Calibre receivers to keep $5.1m from FFWL asset sales to protect themselves against claims brought by Sir George.
Today, Fistonich hasn’t given up the legal battle, and says further proceedings will be heard in three or four months’ time.
1920s: Sir George Fistonich’s father was a Croatian kauri gum digger who settled at Māngere on land which later became Villa Maria Estate, where the family originally grew vegetables.
1939: George was born, and brought up in the Croatian community.
1961: George talked his father into leasing him five acres of land at Māngere, where he initially planted one acre of grapes.
1962: The first wine is made under the Villa Maria name, from grapes harvested from this Māngere block.
1970s: Villa Maria buys its first parcel of Marlborough land and buys Vidal in Hawke’s Bay.
Last decade: The business borrows about $30m for seismic upgrades in Hawke’s Bay. By then it owned many other brands including Esk Valley, Thornbury, Te Ara and Clifford Bay.
2019-today: A long-running legal battle results in receivership and Sir George losing control of Villa Maria.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
Auckland crane numbers fell to an eight-year low.