More on Chinese Winemakers in NZ

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Sue Courtney's blog of vinous ramblings
wine, food & other vinous topics from New Zealand
Jun 29th 2009

Received an email from Raymond Chan, a New Zealand-born Chinese and wine judge, wine retailer and wine palate extraordinaire. Raymond has been juding wines in New Zealand since 1989.

"We have a family story when we first started getting interested in wine in the late 1970s. Then, Totara SYC was of course highly respected for its white wines – Riesling Sylvaner and Chenin Blanc especially sought after, being medal winners. My Dad said that one of the Thames family came to our family living in Dunedin, asking if he could board with us while studying at university, our family names being the same, and that our families came from the same area of China. Dad, and our family not having the room turned him away. So our vinous journey could have possibly had an earlier start!"

Raymond also said, "Don’t forget Albert Chan". Albert Chan was the younger son of Stanley Young Chan and sometime after his primary and high school education in Thames he went to Australia to study at Roseworthy. He became Chief Winemaker at Lindemans in 1983 and went on to become one of Australia's most respected white wine winemakers. Albert met an early and tragic death, but his memory lives on with the Albert Chan Memorial Trophy for Best White Wine of the Show, presented at the Sydney Royal Show each year.

www.wineoftheweek.com/blog/blog200906.htm#20090629

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Who was really NZ's first Chinese winemaker?

Followed a newslink today that took me to an article about New Zealand's first Chinese winemaker. According to the article at the Indian Wine Portal, his name is Johnny Leung - and he is alive and kicking and working at Twilight Vineyard* in Clevedon.

"New Zealand's first Chinese winemaker - that ain't right," I thought. "There have been Chinese winemakers in New Zealand before him".

One who had a lot of media attention is CP Lin - not so much because he is Chinese, but because he is blind. For a long time CP was winemaker at Mountford in Waipara but he is now making wine in the Hunter Valley in Australia.

There is also Johnny's name sake, Edward Leung, whose wines bear the label, Ma Maison.

But the one that immediately sprang to mind is Stanley Young Chan. His initials were part of the name of his winery, Totara Vineyards SYC, at Totara, between Kopu and Thames (click for map) in the Waikato. We called into the winery many times on summer holiday trips to the Coromandel Peninsula, not only for wine but for his famous Totara Kiwifruit Liquer. The winery buildings, winery shop and vineyard are still there. Cuisine magazine lists Gilbert Chan as the current winemaker.

But a quick search tells me that Stanley wasn't the first either. That honour goes to Joe Ah Chan (Chan Hock Joe), who, according to the Dictionary of New Zealand Bibliography, was not only the first Chinese winemaker in New Zealand to make wine, but quite probably the first in the Southern Hemisphere.

Joe (1882 - 1959) arrived in New Zealand around 1905, working in Wellington selling fruit and vegetables. He returned to China for a short time in 1916 but came back to in New Zealand in 1917 to settle in Matamata. In 1925 Chan began to grow grapes at Totara near Thames, the first Chinese New Zealander to do so, and in 1929 he produced his first batch of wine. He was reputed to be the first Chinese wine-maker in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1950 the vineyard was sold to a distant cousin, Stanley Young Chan, who changed the name to Totara Vineyards SYC.

The Encyclopedia of New Zealand records the first man from China arriving in Nelson in 1842. By the late 1860's Chinese were working the Otago goldfields. There have waves of Chinese immigration ever since. Many new Chinese immigrants arrived from 1987 onwards but there are also Chinese New Zealanders who parents and possibly grandparents were born here. So if you know any other Chinese winemakers in New Zealand, please email me.

*Actually the Twilight Vineyards website doesn't make the claim that Johnny is the first Chinese winemaker in NZ. Perhaps an over-exuberant reporter simply got the facts wrong.

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Totara Vineyards
219 Ngati Maru Hwy, Totara, Thames
(RD 1, Thames)
Ph: 07-868 6798, fax: [phone]

General manager/Marketing/Sales:
Peter Coutts
Winemaker/Viticulturist: Gilbert Chan
Wine sales: Mail order
Price range: $7.95-$33.95
Winery tastings: 7 days year round
10am-5.30pm

In common with a few other producers of traditional fortified wines, Totara was left reeling by the introduction in 2003 of a tax imposed on ports and sherries with the declared intention of discouraging teenage drinkers. “We lost 60 percent of our customers,” says winemaker Gilbert Chan, who notes that all his regulars were middle-aged or elderly.

The business was rescued by the fact that it also produces a popular range of liqueurs – such as Totara Café and Totara Kiwifruit Liqueur – that weren’t affected by the impost.

Totara was established in Thames more than half a century ago under the name SYC Wines (after the initials of Gilbert’s father, Stanley Young Chan, who had once owned a fruit shop in Auckland and was widely known around the markets by those initials). Though primarily devoted to the production of fortified wines and liqueurs, Totara also produces a range of table wines that includes Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc and a fruity, off-dry blend of Müller-Thurgau and Muscat.

Cabernet Sauvignon is grown in the tiny estate vineyard, but Gilbert says it’s not an ideal site and the grapes usually go into his port. The rest of the fruit is bought from contract growers, mainly in Hawke’s Bay.
www.cuisine.co.nz/index.cfm?pageID=7419&r=0