You would think the Senior Winemaker at the country's largest winery would escape from it all at the end of the day, but Montana's Steve Voysey doesn't, not in the grapevine growing season anyway.

Nope. He goes home to work the evenings in his own Gisborne vineyard in the 'Hika straight (the local name for Waerenga-a-hika area) near the Bushmere Arms. He has owned his 35-acre block vineyard since 1994 and has since replaced the original Muller-Thurgau and Chasselas with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. There is still some of the original Dr Hogg Muscat on the block but he hopes to replace that with Viognier, soon.

"It's too big for a lifestyle block", he says. "Thirty-five acres produces a lot of grapes".

"If you have time to look after your own vineyard, does that mean you're under-utilised at Montana?" I ask.

Steve laughs. "I put a fair amount of hours in here and it fits in well with the season." Besides, he has someone else working in his vineyard while he is at Montana and has not commercially produced wine from it yet.

As 'Gisborne Senior Winemaker', Steve has a lot of responsibility. There's not so much hands-on winemaking these days - he has two assistants that do most of that. But it is a complete job that includes looking at the vineyards, working with the viticulturists in regards to growing regimes and making harvesting decisions and overseeing the winery and winemaking processes to ensure consistency in the wines that Gisborne puts out.

Steve still has two wines he is directly responsible for, these being two of Gisborne's benchmarks, the 'O' Chardonnay from Ormond and the 'P' Gewurztraminer from Patutahi.

"So what about surfing, fishing and all the things that attracted you to Gisborne in the first place?" I ask.

He shrugs his shoulders. "That is one of the downfalls of being a winemaker and owning a vineyard", he says. Mind you he makes sure he gets to the surf a couple of times a year. You see Steve's a local lad - almost. And surfing is in Steve's blood - just about.

Steve is originally from Whakatane, the next biggest town north of Gisborne, about 2 hours drive along the inland road. His father, who immigrated from the UK before Steve was born, worked in the region's important pulp and paper industry. So Whakatane, with its good beaches, bush and fishing, was a great place to grow up.

Steve left those carefree days behind him when he went to Massey University in Palmerston North to study for a Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in biotechnology. "I wanted a practical hands-on degree", he says. There was too much of a research component in a BSc and he didn't like the research and production line aspect of the pulp and paper industry.

Massey was good. This is where he met Eileen, his future wife and in the final year of his degree he had his first introduction to a large winery. "One of the projects was to design a winery that could process 2-million litres of wine. It was fun but it never would have worked now that I know what the wine industry is really like", he laughed.

Steve had a stint in Taranaki then went to England. On his return, he started in the wine industry. One of his interviews was with Villa Maria and that was his introduction to wine.

Steve joined Montana in 1987 as a trainee. Three years later he was transferred to Gisborne and was promoted to Senior Winemaker in 1996.

We're talking in the wine lab at the Montana Gisborne winery. As I look around I see a combination of old and new, from the traditional Bunsen burner to a state-of-the art UV spectrophotometer for enzyme mapping and colours of red wine, and a capillary electrophoresis system to test acids, phenols, glycosides and protein of grapes. This allows Steve to target blocks and separate them depending on the style of wine he wants to achieve.

In the adjacent winemakers' tasting and blending room the wine racks are full of goodies including bottles containing barrel and cork trials. He finds plastic closures work well for wine that is destined to be sold within a year so uses these on his blending trials to ensure that cork taint is not introduced. This is especially important as samples are sent to the other Montana wineries for assessment there as well as in Gisborne. However screwcaps will soon be used for trials and to anchor benchmark styles for long term reference.

Steve personally thinks screwcaps are great but is waiting for public acceptance. "We need to make the wines more ready to drink when they go into screwcap", he says.

We walk into the winemakers' office. One wall is covered with a huge whiteboard with large coloured circles representing tanks of different sizes. I saw this system at the Montana Marlborough winery but the Gisborne winery is bigger. It is actually a combination of three wineries that back in early days belonged to Montana, Penfolds and Corbans respectively. The wineries are interconnected by a series of underground pipes. There's a lot here to be accountable for.

Although Montana has the reputation of not entering competitions, Steve is particularly proud of his show successes. The best was the year that Montana picked up six gold medals in the Sydney International Top 100 - three of the medals coming to Gisborne - one each for Semillon, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer - wines Steve was responsible for. As well, Montana was selected 'most awarded winery'. Steve went to Sydney to the awards dinner that year. "It was a pretty special night".

Steve knows what wine judges are like. He's been one. The judging at the 2002 Gisborne International Chardonnay Challenge, where Steve was a Senior Judge, was only a couple of days before our talk.

Although he would like to see his two wines, the 'O' and the 'P' compete in shows, there is no commercial reason for Montana to enter them. Other Montana brands compete, however, and the Saints Chardonnay 2001, made at the Gisborne winery from a blend of Gisborne and Marlborough fruit, was one of the gold medal wines this year. "And 2001 was a difficult year in Gisborne", says Steve.

One of the worst things that ever happened to Steve was the year he was a trainee in Marlborough. He was working as a cellar hand back then. "It is not good to pump air into the bottom of a fermenting tank of wine", said Steve, but somehow he managed to do that. "It starts off as a little bubble and as it goes up it gets bigger and bigger pushing the wine in the tank above it up, as well". It was a half million litre tank, full of Muller-Thurgau. Steve managed to make the aisles of the winery about 3 foot deep in wine.

Steve must have made a good impression on Montana in other ways for look where he is now!

Steve finds Montana a stimulating place to work especially as Montana continues to grow.

There is the opportunity to make more and more exciting wine styles and to continue to experiment with blends. He believes blended wines are better but labelling laws are going to make it more and more difficult to compete. He'd love to see blends of red and whites but says that as soon as you put two varieties on the label, the price point drops, no matter how good the wine is. And the public will not readily accept blended wines, except for the traditional red varieties. However he believes that as the Montana brand becomes stronger then it will be selling more in the quality emphasis on the brand rather than the country.

In his role as senior winemaker there is also the overseas trips. Marketing and sales trips can sometimes be combined with holidays. His favourite destinations are Alsace - for the viticulture and winemaking styles, and Florida for the restaurants, the lifestyle and the wine savvy people he meets.

Steve is committed to Gisborne. He loves living here, it's a great place to bring up his 4 kids and it's a great place to grow grapes and make wine.

"There's a wide range of grapes and there is a lot more variation in the styles of wine we can make - although we can't really successfully make Sauvignon Blanc, pinot noir or riesling here", he says.

He has never known 2 years to be similar in terms of challenges and highlights. He gets a huge satisfaction out of the end products. And as the industry is moving forward there are new wine styles and new wine flavours to play around with.

© Sue Courtney
November 2002