Spine trust gets winery support

Helping out: Winemaker Michelle Richardson. Picture / Greg Bowker

Winemaker Michelle Richardson will add her wines to a dinner fundraiser for spinal cord injury charity CatWalk Trust, an event to be attended by royal Zara Phillips.

Princess Anne's daughter and the other attendees at the June 23 dinner at the Ellerslie Racecourse will sip Richardson Wine's 2004 Marlborough sauvignon blanc.

It is one of the first wines released under Ms Richardson's own label. She left Villa Maria, where she was chief winemaker, this year.

Ms Richardson had planned to launch the label earlier, but in March 2003 her brother, Sean, suffered a paralysing spinal cord injury while swimming in Australia. 

After mowing his lawn on the Gold Coast, the 36-year-old headed to the beach to rinse off in the waves.

"He was just body-surfing and the rip was so bad when he came in, he hit a sandbar," Ms Richardson said. He was paralysed from the chest down.

"This is my way of helping out," Ms Richardson said of her wine donation.

"It's not a very fashionable disease. It's a hugely costly injury. It needs to get out there a bit more.

"How many people are in wheelchairs, and do you see them?"

Proceeds from the dinner will go to organisations researching new treatments, including stem-cell research, intensive physiotherapy and new drugs.

An auction will be part of the entertainment at the 520-seat dinner, which will cost $250 a ticket.

A magnum of Ms Richardson's Central Otago 2003 Pinot Noir, one of 20 bottled by the winemaker herself, will be auctioned.

The newly formed trust is the brainchild of Catriona Williams, an award-winning horsewoman who has been in a wheelchair since being thrown while riding more than two years ago.

When friends wanted to raise money to buy gadgets to make her life easier, Mrs Williams said she only wanted the use of her legs back. The group founded CatWalk Trust.

"We are supporting research for a cure, not research for rehabilitation," Mrs Williams said. "A lot of people want you to accept that you're in a chair and this is your life. And I guess for somebody like me, you never accept that this is it."