Queen's birthday honours: Rewarded for having some bottle

George Fistonich with some of the wines that have made his Villa Maria Group such a success. Picture / Martin Sykes

George Fistonich was raised in Mangere on "nice, warm milk" he squirted into a billy from the family cow each day before school.

Today, the Queen's Birthday Honours recipient offers tastings of gold- medal-winning wines to writers from Japan, the United States and England at his Villa Maria Group's $30 million headquarters overlooking 40ha of Mangere's rich volcanic soil.

A "wine park" is taking shape there, handy to Auckland Airport, and Mr Fistonich intends it to become a showplace for the country's wine industry.

It is service to the industry that has earned Mr Fistonich the title of Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit - the highest honour handed out in the Queen's Birthday list.

Villa Maria Group, of which he is founder and managing director, exports wine to 40 countries, and operations embracing two public companies employ 230 people full-time in Mangere, Gisborne, Hawkes Bay and Marlborough.

His winemaking started as a youth helping his Croatian father, who had an acre of grapes.

In 1961, Mr Fistonich and wife Gail started Villa Maria Estate in Mangere. Gail looked after the shop while he made the wine and delivered it, often to a wine'n'cheese party or to a Radio Hauraki function to get the product known.

"We've seen a revolution, because then people drank mostly sherry and ports," he said yesterday.

"It was the dawning of people drinking dry whites and dry reds, though there was no such thing as a chardonnay, sauvignon blanc or a pinot noir or merlot. They came later, in the 70s and 80s."

Mr Fistonich gave up crushing grapes to become a "generalist" - sniffing out trends while progressively employing young people with expertise in viticulture, winemaking, bottling and production.

"Winemaking has become very scientific but there will always be an art to it and I think people are successful in it because they have a very strong passion for it and really live it."

Mr Fistonich's reputation in the industry as a risk-taker grew when Villa Maria was ahead of the pack in making the switch to screw caps.

"It was a calculated risk," he said. "If your object in life is to make quality wine you don't have much choice. Now we know the wine is going to be in perfect condition."

Producing medal-winning wines is satisfying, he says, but so is Villa Maria's success with its employees, some of whom have served the company for 20 years or have gone on to fill top posts overseas.

The Fistonich philosophy that wine and the arts go nicely together has resulted in a 20-year sponsorship of the Auckland Philharmonia, which, to Mr Fistonich's delight, performed its summer matinee at the Montgomerie Rd wine park.