Wine baron Kim Goldwater died after crashing his tractor.
Wine baron Kim Goldwater died after crashing his tractor.
One of New Zealand's "most prestigious" winegrowers has died after the tractor he was driving crashed down a bank on his Waiheke Island property.
Kim Goldwater and his wife Jeanette developed the island's first commercial vineyard, Goldwater Estate Winery, in Putiki Bay, defying scepticism in the 1970s. It would go on to be rated among the world's top 100 wineries.
In early 2011, the generous retiring couple donated the vineyard - which had a land value of $4m - to the University of Auckland and moved to a property nearby.
Kim, 85, died on Thursday while riding a tractor on the property.
Wine baron Kim Goldwater, second from right, pictured with late wife Jeanette, son in law Christie and daughter Gretchen, tragically died in a tractor crash on Thursday. Photo / New Zealand Herald
His son Michael Goldwater told the Herald on Sunday that just how the tragedy happened would never be known.
"It has been like a detective story. I can't say why it happened, but I can say what happened.
"It is not the steepest hill in the world but you wouldn't want to be 85 years old, going down there on a tractor, backwards, with a mower connected to it."
Police and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter were called. A police spokesperson confirmed the tragedy had been referred to the coroner.
Despite international acclaim, Michael Goldwater said his father remained the same humble and loving man.
"He was a very charismatic and confident man.
"But you would never hear him say how clever they were. He was never into blowing his own trumpet.
"Their wine was blown up in the Twin Towers [the 2001 terror attacks in New York] . . . that's how successful their wine was, exported to 27 countries and the top of the pops of being one of the best wines in the world."
Vineyard founders Jeanette and Kim Goldwater along with University of Auckland wine science director Randy Weaver, centre, on the gifting of land in 2011. Photo / New Zealand Herald
The couple bought the Waiheke land for $30,000 in 1978 and it went on to become Goldwater Estate.
It is now used to teach students on a wine science diploma course and continues as a functioning vineyard and event venue open to the public.
After donating his estate, Kim Goldwater said: "We're not spring chickens anymore. Managing 14 hectares of land is becoming quite an arduous task. And we know the university will look after it."
His son yesterday said of the gesture: "My parents were not from the land of gentry. And yet at the time when they gave the vineyard to the university I am pretty sure they were the second-biggest donors ever to the university.
"They weren't poor, but they weren't billionaires. So that makes me very proud.
"Their attitude was that they had gained from the viticultural community, so this was a way to give back. It was a win-win . . . they could give back to the community, the vineyard could keep being a vineyard, and the university could go from having a concrete box out in East Tamaki as their wine science department to the most beautiful vineyard in the world."
The couple's generosity included looking after all the Goldwater Estate workers.
They hosted staff at morning tea and lunch at a large table in their house.
"Two times a day they would get around that table . . . that was Mum and Dad's lounge," Michael said.
"As their son, and living in their footsteps, what I have learned is how much they gave people.
"Around all the glamour they looked after people. There are countless stories of how they looked after people who worked for them, or who had worked for them. The whole atmosphere of the place was an open door."
In 2017 the couple travelled to Italy with family and close friends from around the world for a combined 80th birthday celebration. The four-day party culminated with a dinner at a 14th century villa.
"They had built this network in and around the wine industry of people who had helped them right from the very start," Goldwater said of the special celebrations.
"They had benefited from the help – including from many people from overseas who couldn't travel here - so decided this was one of the ways they could have a party and say thank you."
Sadly, Jeanette died three years later.
Jeannette and Kim Goldwater pictured at the 2005 Waiheke Wine Festival. Photo / Supplied
The Goldwater's had three children: daughters Karen and Gretchen, and son Michael.
"My parents were two middle-class people, with a normal family, who were pulling themselves up by their own bootstrings, all on borrowed money and ended up, with others, transforming Waiheke," he said.
"It was a team effort. They were a phenomenal team with very complementary skills.
"[At the start] they had no money, just a lot of initiative. Then they ended up giving it away, giving a lot of love to a lot of people."
Michael Goldwater said his father was a man he would "take risks" and would like to do things himself.
If he was told something couldn't be done, he would still give it a crack.
"He came from a sailing background," he said. "The story goes that his older brother, who was 10 at the time, owned a wee sailing dinghy which leaked like a sieve. Dad was 4.
"His older brother would take him out to Rangitoto from Takapuna Beach in the sailing dinghy with no lifejackets or parents in sight.
An aerial view of part of the award-winning Goldwater Estate vineyard. Photo / Supplied
"He was made from a cloth that you can't buy anymore."
In the late 1970s Kim and Jeanette embarked on a journey into the unknown; trying to make a success out of growing grapes on Waiheke Island.
As they started developing the land, the family would sail from Auckland every Friday night with supplies – including fence posts, vines and wire – before working on the land on weekends. They would then return to the mainland late on a Sunday.
"They were the first people to grow grapes commercially on Waiheke and were at the sharp end of a trend," their son said.
"They had been looking at all sorts of options. They wanted to buy land, somewhere, and grow something. That was their dream."
Kim Goldwater chronicled his and his wife's wine journey on Waiheke Island in the 2013 memoir, Vineyard Virgins.
The book's blurb explains that when they planted their first "tiny" area of vines, "all the experts warned them that grapes would not grow in that inclement salt-laden environment".
Goldwater Estate Winery on Waiheke Island was named one of the top 100 wineries of the world at the 2005 London International Wine and Spirit Fair. Photo / New Zealand Herald
"The Goldwaters, both 4th generation New Zealanders, had no experience of winemaking, but doggedly persisted with their island experiment and eventually proved the skeptics wrong by winning numerous international awards for their wines.
"This success encouraged them to expand their enterprise, first into Marlborough and then into the Hawke's Bay, to eventually become one of New Zealand's largest and most prestigious wine growers."
The first vintage was in 1981 and one of their early merlot-cabernet franc's put Waiheke truly on the wine-producing map.
The Goldwaters' resilience shone through in the early years when a wayward council spraying project aimed at eradicating gorse almost wiped out their crops.
By the early 2000s, Goldwater Estate was producing 200,000 litres of wine a year, exporting to 27 countries.
Goldwater Estate Winery was named one of the top 100 wineries in the world at the 2005 London International Wine and Spirit Fair.
