Our People: Wine maker Brent Park

Brent Park of Volcanic Hills Winery. Photo/Stephen Parker

Hefting beer crates isn't the usual starting point for wine makers.

But then Brent Park's not your archetypical wine maker.

For starters, he's Rotorua-based - not a spot generally noted for viticulture.

French-born Daniel Le Brun did attempt to grown a few vines out Ngongotaha way several decades ago but one decent frost and he lost the lot.

But this isn't his story - it's Brent's.

He and business partner Sean Beer (how ironical the fruit of the hop features in this wine maker's life) have been producing their Volcanic Hills label from their winery tucked in beside Skyline's gondola base since 2013; their grapes are sourced from across the country.

The tasting room "up the hill" came the previous year, the winery was a natural progression.

Going into it's akin to walking into a science lab. Brent's dangling a test tube over what, to us, looks suspiciously like the Bunsen burner of our school days.

He assures us they're long outmoded, their naked flame considered far too dangerous in this health and safety conscious era.

However, he does concede that, stripped as it is of any hint of glamour, the reality is the winery's a laboratory. It's where all the careful blending goes on that gives the Volcanic Hills product the taste that's taking its reds and whites to international level. A sparkling's to be released at hospice's Dancing with the Stars fundraiser in August; Brent was a 2016 contestant.

Back to the subject of blending, like Bunsen burners grape treading's now consigned to history, today it's a highly specialised process.

So where did all this begin?

The son of an orthodontist, Rotorua became Brent's home while at primary school.

It was preceded by "the best education of all", a trip around Europe in a Kombi van.

"My father was studying in London, when I was 7 our parents packed me and my older brother in that van and toured the continent, an amazing experience."

Brent's worked frequently in Europe since, it's essential to keep a Kiwi wine maker on top form.

He admits he was one of those Rotorua-raised kids who left school convinced the grass was greener elsewhere.

His elsewhere was Massey University in Palmerston North, where he studied agricultural economics, graduating with a business and marketing degree.

It carried him to the capital and a job with Lands and Survey.

"It was bloody good fun but I still didn't really know what I wanted to do, I had this part-time job with Liquorland, mostly moving beer crates around but my interest in wine began to develop."

It inspired him to enrol in Lincoln University's viticulture and oenology post graduate course. Well-established wine makers were fellow students.

"They were there to get recognised qualifications, it was quite an eye-opener being surrounded by people described in the industry as 'well drunk', a term referring to those internationally experienced in the industry.

"It was a huge learning experience, very interesting, discovering the people who worked in it were similar to me."

From Lincoln, Brent became a Liquorland management trainee in Wellington. Ironically, his first job was launching Heineken in New Zealand.

He moved to Glengarry Wines in Auckland "following my future wife, Larissa".

Glengarry cemented his conviction wine was where his future lay. The couple moved to London where that name of his threw locals - Brent Park's one of its suburbs.

"I went into Ikea [furniture retailer] in Brent Park and they wouldn't serve me, convinced I was lying to them about the name on my credit card."

From selling wine in New Covent Garden he moved to South Africa's Stellenbosch region.

"I had a degree, a reasonable palate, that's what got me over the line."

Australia was next then home to Delegat's, producers of the Oyster Bay label.

"I stayed 10 years, learning my craft, I learnt from Jim Delegat the importance of keeping your business very concise."

In New Zealand's off season there were trips to the major wine growing regions of Spain, France and Italy.

He and Sean were Delegat's co-workers.

"I was the winery operations manager and wine maker, Sean the assistant wine maker. We shared a space no bigger than the couch you're sitting on and realised we could work really well together, decided we were going to do something together."

Herald the birth of Volcanic Hills, as it was originally known, the word 'winery' came later.
Rotorua was chosen as home base.

"There were three reasons for that, my family were here, it didn't have a winery and thirdly we secured this site [Skyline], we'd done a lot of scouting around."

Before set-up Brent continued to commute to leading overseas wineries.

"The south of France, Spain, at Yellow Tail in Oz, I was working to gain more experience, earn money to develop this [winery], once we were established I stopped travelling.

"What I didn't understand when we came here was Rotorua's a tourism place, not a business place, it took a lot of learning to slot into the tourism industry."

The blending season excluded, Brent and Sean operate separately.

"In Rotorua I'm the face of Volcanic Hills, Sean's its face in Tauranga, the Mount. My job is to be as upfront as possible that's why I danced for hospice, I do a lot of public speaking, it's great fun, you own the brand, that is who you are."

BRENT PARK:
Born: Dunedin, 1968.
Education: Orleans Infant School, London, Otonga Primary, Rotorua Intermediate Boys' High, Massey, Lincoln Universities.
Family: Wife Larissa, two daughters.
Interests: Family, "I'm an active relaxer, an 'ants in the pants' person, I don't sit down, I tend to tinker with projects, fixing stuff." Social basketball, Toasmasters.
On making wine: "It's pretty much an emotional thing, getting it wrong isn't an option, you get one chance so if you screw it up you get a couple of years of hangovers."
On Rotorua: "Rotorua people are proud of being from here, it's a place where business people support each other."
Personal philosophy: "I haven't really got one because I'm still changing."