E107 Jen Parr - Valli Wine

[Music] Kia ora and welcome. I'm Boris the Mont and you're listening to the New Zealand wine podcast. Thanks for joining us. In this episode we're speaking with the Gen Paar, the wine maker at Bali wines in central Otago here in New Zealand. Gen was born in Oregon in the United States and didn't start her career in wine but came to that at a later time. So let's go have a chat with Gen. Hi Gen. Hi Boris how are you? I'm very well thanks for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate that and you're joining us from your house in Wainaka. That's right. Where did your wine journey start? I understand it wasn't something that you'd particularly chosen as a career from leaving school. You grew up in the US and Oregon is that right? Yes I fit the first 18 years into an Oregon before going to university in California and then I went to New York and London and back to New York and visited a lot of places in between but London was the last permanent residence before I officially started my wine journey. Did you have any sort of interaction with the wine country of Oregon? Was there anything for you when you were there growing up? Not really at all. I don't even think I knew that wine was a thing in Oregon when I was growing up. My family at what really a wine drinking family. Those of my brothers enjoy wine now but my parents weren't really wine drinkers and it was about an hour and a half away. To be honest when I was growing up we didn't even go into the city of Portland, Oregon very often. I just lived in the suburbs thinking of going out into the wine country and just was never a thing we would have done. What took you to university in California? I guess just the opportunity I was not sure. I knew I wanted to get a university and certainly applied to the University of Oregon where my brothers went and it was a great school and that was kind of where I thought I could end up going but I really had a desire to go further away and I did pretty well in school so I thought maybe I could get into a smaller private school so I'd try to view and I visited Stanford with a high school friend her father took us on a kind of college visitation trip and I just fell over the place and so I thought I'll try it here and it was kind of funny because my university counselor at the high school she's to have somebody who's top to kids who want to go to university and canceled them on how to do that and when I told her I wanted to get a Stanford she said why would you want to go there? We've got great schools in Oregon and that's what I know we do but because there's other places in the world so yeah so it's quite lucky together and it's a school that certainly is known for IT and technology and banking and all athletes and all sorts of things but it had a very good liberal arts department as well great English teachers and I decided that I didn't want to go to medical school or become a banker or a program and so I decided to just study what I enjoyed which was literature and books and took Spanish classes as well and this had a wonderful just all-around education but it didn't leave me with a pathway as to when I wanted to do for a career so I did end up working for a sort of software company because there were a plethora of them around the Stanford University and that possibly is how I ended up in wine because I got to see the world and live in some cool cities with restaurants and wine education classes and you know you never know what would have happened if I'd done something different but I always have felt because I didn't really come to wine till I was 30 that I'd play and catch up a lot of my with the wine makers down here that I admire they had 10 years on me because it was their first career so I've always felt like a younger wine maker even if I'm the same age as a lot of my contemporaries I have this rich experience of traveling and learning other cultures and learning how to sell big ticket items to very serious people and also learning that I wasn't interested in technology or finance which was the field that I'd fallen into so I wouldn't change a thing to be honest. Yeah all those experiences sound great and are good to have in life you did that for a while with the software company it sounds like you got quite a bit of travel in and how long did that carry on for you and what was the transition like for you to move from that into wine. It was about nine years that I worked for two well three companies actually including a French one and then I sort of got to a place a launching place within that industry and the next move would have been a big one and probably would have kept me in it but my my heart just wasn't in it I just said it before on some more short of podcasts that I sort of evaluate my happiness level in life by how many times I hit snooze on the alarm clock and when I'm very happy in what I'm doing and excited about the prospect of the new day I wake up before my law and I then I was hitting snooze a lot and that to me told me that I wasn't doing something that got me excited and so I when I was living in London I got to travel a bit partly because you get a lot more holiday than you do in America anyway sort of similar to here so every chance we got with one friend or another we'd be on a chain or a budget airplane to somewhere in Europe and I'd always researched beforehand you know what the wine from that area was and what the food we should eat in and that was kind of my M.O. I was really interested in food and wine and and in London there were the amazing wine classes that you could take and I was driving all my friends to them at least one a week I'd be going to a wine dinner or a wine class or west the new restaurants and and that was really what I was very passionate about and so when I decided that I didn't want to hit snooze on my alarm clock anymore I thought what would you do I would have loved to have wrote a famous novel that everyone wanted to read but what I'm like really in a place to do that so I thought what else would you do and I thought I'd like to sell something that interests me because to me the process of selling finding the opportunity negotiating the contract building relationships all of that was amazing and those are very transferable skills even in wine people often yeah ridicule me in a friendly way about oh a nearby maker I'm sure that English degree got her Stanford comes in handy and they're being facetious but the reality is it does what I've come to learn over two and a bit decades of two and a half decades of making wine next shall be my second decade in central tabo yes that to me wine is a language in and of itself it has the means of communicating so many valuable things and each part of my life has certainly played into the present and each every every year and wine I'm looking for near ways to use that language of wine it's a communicator right it communicates plays it to communicate on geology it can communicate culture it changes its voice depending on who's drinking it and what food it's scared with how long it's sat quietly in a cellar it's if you go back to one of your favorite books that you read maybe as a younger man or already still a young man and if you reread it would say something different to you now but it's at the same pages right so wine to me if you have a bundle wine today at 2024 Valley White Hockey Pino and would say something to you and maybe you're lucky enough to have a couple bottles of it and hide one from yourself so you don't drink it right away and ten years down the track not only would it remind you if it meant anything to you in that moment which probably dead or he wouldn't have saved it it would remind you of that time you drank it but it would say something new and different to you and I've been my most recent perspective on what my role is as a wine maker is I'm really a narrator so the language exists and it's existed for a long time and the language is written by the soils and the climate so my job is just to interpret what this fee-to-fill liquid is trying to say and now it's perpetually changing so yes my main language literature degree from Stanford is certainly playing a role in and one of the most important jobs that a wine maker does which is communicate about what we're selectively creating in that culminates in this bottle right because a wine sitting on a shelf is a wine sitting on a shelf and there'll be a bunch of good ones but what makes that wine special is the ability to communicate why and what is in in that bottle and that to me is how if we want wine to succeed for the next generation we need to be thinking about how wine communicates not what it tastes like and not that kind of thing it's what is it saying to me what does it make me feel and we need to get better at that narration I think people are already making good wine right I'm surrounded by geniuses like creative passionate amazing people and what is good anyway like good to use ordinary to someone else and amazing there's the beautiful creation so how do we move forward in an industry that you read the news every day and there's not a lot of positivity about alcohol in general or who's drinking it and who's in the light and so you could just really be consumed by that or you could say there's opportunity there but how do we see that and it's not by making better wine it's about better communicating what that wine means so I don't know if that answered any of your questions about the Lomb can just but that's what I'm thinking about in this epic of this era of my career. - Yeah, no, it certainly did. It certainly really and very easily showed us what were your passion is and that you've moved in the right direction. And I think the aspect of telling stories, that's why we do the podcast is because that's what lifts the wine and when you're drinking a bottle that you've bought somewhere and you heard the story and you remember the place where you were, that makes it so much more special than, as you say, just going along and grabbing it off the shelf. So you were in London and when you thought you were just hitting the snooze button a bit too often and for too long. - Yeah, I love London, it was a great place. But so I thought if I could find something I'm interested in and sell that, then everything would fall into place. And so my greatest interest was wine. So I thought if I could go and kick grapes and maybe work in a winery and learn how wine is made, then I'd better understand it. And then I'd be able to sell it. So I'd been visiting one of the oldest wine grind regions in Europe in France, that day for a few years, friends of mine had a 200 plus year old form house in the southwest of France and they'd let us stay. And then as I said before, I'd look at what wines were around here and so we got to the vineyards in Guyacan. At that time, the good from the bad or whatever, they were just all delicious rustic wines that were ground right there. And I wrote a letter to a family that I'd become friendly with, I started a little birthday party at their cellar and said, could I come kick grapes with you? And they said, "Certainly." So that was sort of my plan was to go to the southwest of France and pick grapes. But a couple weeks before I was due to helping a car and drive down there, they wrote to me and said that they'd sold their vineyard and everything was going to be machine harvested. So there was nothing from meat to do. So then I was thinking, what do I do now? But they said, but we'd taken the liberty to talk to our friend, our neighbor, who's a consultant and he takes international people. And if you want to go work opposite them, he'd be happy to have you. And that was fate in our reading because I worked with one of the, for a couple of years, we stayed in touch. One of the most gifted, passionate, crazy wine makers in the world and he would kick grapes and then I'd hang out in the cellar after it and watch him and the young one to go work. And but it was really kind of the culture of wine and the lot of wine and the community of wine because he'd get people from Brittany that worked for the post office, literally the post of the workers would take their holiday and come get grapes. And rather, she had the fun that went along with it. But it was, yeah, for 10 years, every holiday they'd go down and they'd take grapes. And so it, for me, was just eye opening. But what would I do next? And I was really interested in New Zealand, I tell him I hadn't been here. But in London, I was, this was around 2000, when I went to Guyak. So from around 2000, till 2002, I was discovering New Zealand wines in London. And so that was some time ago. So that was the beginning of Central Target. So the one central target one that I would go out of my way to find and drink was ripened. And then I discovered Muddy Water, which was a place I eventually went and worked, you know, the Astral Lab wines. There were a number of boutique-ish wines that I was finding. And I'd heard that New Zealand was a lot like Oregon. And as much as I loved living in San Francisco, New York, London, spending time in Paris and South Africa, and Johannesburg, no great cities, I'd missed quite it. And I missed the serenity and nature. And I thought New Zealand sounds a bit like what I grew up with, lakes and mountains and oceans and rivers. And wouldn't it be great to discover wine that also maybe had a little bit of a time outdoors again? And so after writing a number of letters to wineries, that I'd either seen in the UK or read about eventually, George Sherriss at the Llorian Marbara said that I could come and have a crack at harvest. How long were you in the southwest of France, then, before that moved to New Zealand? About half a year, four months, four or five months. So I worked the harvest and then I kind of stayed on either side of it. And then I went back the following year for another harvest. So you moved to New Zealand very quickly, then, after being made your decision. And it was because of some exposure to New Zealand wine, while you're in London, before you even went to France. Open that opportunity in your mind that might be a good place to go. And as you say, to get a little bit away from being in big cities? Yeah, and I mean, it's possibly a little cliche, but in New Zealand, so I'll be in Blancu, this is why I became the central target one, and even though I don't make so many in Blancu anymore, I have hair in there, but it was a wine that really resonated for me at the time. And I do still seek them out and drink them, not regularly, because I'm surrounded by a peanut noir and char né and peanut grey. But I do think that, you know, we have a lot to be grateful for that the most non-variety was so strong and in continuous city in the strong now. There are not a lot of central target wine makers are probably feel that way about Sauvian Latf is there's so little ground in here, but I have tremendous risk for the variety and still drink them fairly regularly. It was obviously your entry point into New Zealand, Marbra Sauvignon. So how long will you with Valmeria for and what were you doing there? Just a harness. So I was a very green seller hand, worked my first ever night shift. I survived on peanut butter and jelly and citrus slice from the local bakery. I also played a bit of golf because thing on night shift, you go have a nap and then go play nine holes before you went back to work. Yeah, I mainly learned a lot about mechanics of why making how to use publish, how to rack wine, how to clean things, how to clean more things, how to clean more things. I think big one or eight parents is really valuable because you learn things that then become invaluable to small wineries. So often I get approached by want to be wine makers and they only want to work for this kind of winery, or only small wineries, or a label teak, and I think, but what do you have? What experience do you have to bring to us? And also it's so much fun and there's even someone like Craigy Range where I also worked which I wouldn't call it big winery, but there's certainly a bit of a big oven valley. The scale of that is reasonable. I learned so much there that I don't necessarily use every day today, but I wouldn't be the one maker I and had I not had that kind of experience and that exposure to what making our whole volume of wine in one tank. That was the next step for you after Villa Maria was Craigy Range? In New Zealand, yes. I was Villa Maria then I had, I didn't work permanently in New Zealand the year round job until 2007. So 2003 I was at Millamaria, 2004 and 2000. I did Harvest at Craigy Range, then six. I did the Harvest in North Kentivore at Muddy Water, and then I got the job at Olsons and Cromwell in Central Ta-ro and haven't left since. Okay, so Olsons was when you decided to stay a bit more permanently on and through the year rather than moving between Harvest off Shore and Beck? Yeah, I love to say that it was my choice. The reality is I would have left to have been in New Zealand permanently a lot earlier, but there's visas and things that are tricky and just binding a job. An in-central taco jobs are fewer because companies are smaller and everybody wants them. I just happened to have an opportunity with Matt Kodon, who was the one maker also at the time. He had a house in American wife. He spent time in Oregon working at El Tove, said he was looking for a perspective that wasn't run within the local industry and so he took a punts on me and that's Matt to thank for me being here. So once I finally found that opportunity, that was when I came. I actually thought I would end up in Maru room. It just made more sense. More jobs, you know, but again, faith intervened and there's no world I'd rather live than right here in Monaco. So sometimes you get some setbacks. There was a job I was first in line for about six months. Even went and met the owner. It is I was in the UK's pretty famous guy. And then when it came down to it, they hired another guy who had more experience. And not as pretty. There were tears because I thought I was going to get this job and I was going to end up in Maru. And so it took a little longer. I'm still friends with the fellow I didn't hire me today. And he made the right choice. The guy with the dead hire did a lot more experience and had that happen. I'm like, there'll be a more. So, you know, everything that doesn't go according to plan might actually be the plan. You just don't know yet. Yeah, absolutely. It's a your assistant. Why make care at Olsons? Yeah. So I joined in 2007 and then in 2008 at the end of the year, Matt left to become the Ymaker Aka Rua. And I was offered his job at Olsons. And at the time, it was pretty touching go for Olsons. You know, the owners had led up times are a little bit tough. And then I don't know that it was known that they were actively trying to sell it. But I thought if it sells, who knows what's going to happen. But at least I'll have the opportunity to be a head one maker and learn some new skills. And it was thanks to Olsons that I met Grant Taylor at Valley because they had a history of engaging a mentor for their new one makers. And they'd had two one makers up to that point. They only ever had three because they sold. But there was Pete Bartle followed by Matt Connell. And so when I was discussing with Heather and experiencing that honor, founder of the orphans, who might be a good mentor, a few people came up, but I said, what about that guy, Grant Taylor? And he seems like he knows some stuff and he's pretty nice. And so he grabbed it because it took him a call. So he came on board as someone, they wanted it to be a paid mentorship. So then I wouldn't feel like I was seeing someone by contacting them. So he come one to month, when he was in Chrome, it drives into the one or yard and afterwards for a month. And though when it came down to one, I was trying to figure out how to select blends for my first bottling. He was very helpful, not in telling you what to do, but just helping me have confidence in what I was saying. And we became, you know, good mates after that. And then eventually that was 2009. So in 2010, he rack up the orphanage inside whatever you're paying me pay her. She doesn't email and which is great. And then we just stayed friendly. We have the same employer in Australia for a little while. So we stayed close until the people moment and to anyone I joined him at Valley. And in between times, Olsen's had become tear sinked? Yeah. And then he was sold in the fall of, no, in the spring of 2011 and then rebranded as tear sinked the following year. And then they built their own winery in the 13 out of the vineyard. So I was with them for the first three years of them creating their brand. And then we parted ways. And I took a little break to get married and came back and started with Valley. So in that period when I left tear sinked, I also started a small consultancy. I was supported by Sir Kate D'Nanet mod wines because she saw a lot of growers who really needed an advocate. Someone who would maybe the style director or take on ownership of making sure that they're wines. They didn't, people who didn't know their own winery, the Heather and vineyard. And maybe soul-grage, but also Heather and bottling and really needed someone to look up for their wines to make sure that they had character and interest and all of that. And so she was very supportive and encouraging me to work with the people. And I had one of the clients that I picked up and worked with for over 10 years was Wild Earth. So that's been a big part of me last decade as well. And that's when I got into wine judgey. And she also meant over me there. So I import this full amount of oak barrels. There are a lot of little bits and pieces, a chair of wine shop. I have many little facets to the job, but the biggest part of what I do is make wine for Valley. Yeah. And so just over a decade now, doing that? Yeah, 12 harvest, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it's been that long, but that's always been something that was important to me is having perspective, being able to look back because you learned so much from having a number of integers and remembering this is a bit like that. And I remember when we did that in 2017 and we wished we hadn't. And if you're in a workplace or with a certain vineyard for a year or two, you never really have that relationship with the place that you do when you start getting into double digits or nobody makes triple digits. But I think a decade is important. And that's when you really start to feel like you have a relationship with a place. And you've got four different sites now having to and working with about that four different varietals. Was that has that always been the case or is that developed over the time you've been there last 12 years? Yeah. And so Valley has always made, well, not always, it started as Pinot Noir and then re-slinged joined the portfolio recently, like 2006 I think it was. And Pinot Grit started the year before I joined in 2014. But Shardinay, Orange Pinot Grit and the Pisa subregion have all become better a part of my tenure as well as a really important initiative we have, which is our Canine charity series, which we started in 2019 and every year we crop the wine. It's usually a different technique or a different variety or a different place. So something quite create, you know, that involves creativity on the one making side. But it's also quite fun for our loyal customers to have this one off. What's Valley going to do next, wine? But the most important thing is that we've done it proceeds to local charities. And it's not as much the money that we give them, but it's going back to telling stories. It's going out and talking about work they do and helping people gain awareness for these great small local charities that exist in New Zealand. So we've had animal rescue shelter pound faws in the White Fakie Valley. We've had Canine Medical Detection a few times. They raised dogs for the early detection of cancer. We had Cerset, which is an environmental trust down in Stuart Island. And we haven't released it yet, but we work with Southern Lake Sanctuary. So we go between animals and birds, but it's people you always try and get out of me, which is my favorite Valley wine. And I don't think anyone would ever confess like who's your favorite brother, sister or who's your favorite child. But now I can hand it my heart and say it's the charity one, because it's just so personally meaningful for me and also the team to do a small part through our craft to help our community. Quite a different thing to be doing, which must be a nice balance. Is it not if you're doing the Pinot Waiar, which I understand is they're all single vineyard wines? And single subregional subregional. So there was a time when there were single vineyard through Grud. We sometimes they're single vineyard. In the case of our new subregion, pizza is a single vineyard that we lease in far, but sometimes they are too vineyards within a subregion or something. But they're focused on distinct areas, not necessarily a particular site. Yeah. So being able to play around a little bit more with something different is probably nice balance is it? Yeah. Yeah. It is fun. It gives us ideas. You know, like we were made a central target shardonnay now twice. So we make Wai Takishardonnay all the time, that we've made see central otago shardonnays under this K-9 dog series. And so it teaches us more about making shardonnay, because like we do at Pininowar, if you're making Bendiga Pininowar, and you're making Gibson Pininowar, it's the same variety, but the very different things. So central target shardonnay, you could even say, "Pizza shardonnay" would be different from Bannockburn, although I'm only making pizza. The pizza central target shardonnay is certainly a different character and a different kettle of fish to Wai Takish. And we make them differently to reflect that. So one thing about Valley and our winery, I think, to start Hawaii, you never stop learning, and you never stop drawing. And yeah, everything comes easy than you're not drawing hard enough, because setbacks, as I said before, are actually part of your destiny. You just don't know it at the time. And they need to trip once a while and scrape your knee and put a plaster on it and learn how not to do that next time, or whatever. You put in a, yeah, something, you fix the thing that tripped you. So yeah, so we're encouraged to experiment, we're encouraged to push the envelope. But in doing that, we also are trying to create lines of consistency. So that's also a challenge to experiment without changing the familiarity and something that people see as a comfort. When you go home to Valley, it's like, rather than it, you feel something familiar, right? But that doesn't mean you have to wear the same jumper every day. It can be casual, but you might have a pink one, you might have a blue one, one might have buttons, it's something familiar and it gives comfort is important. But you also have to stay dynamic, because the vineyards of dynamic, the weather is dynamic. So if the wine isn't dynamic, then you're not really telling that narration the way you should. So is that now five subregions? Is it the Gibson Benicron being to go Y Takie and now Pisa? Yeah, so four in Central Otago and then the Y Takie Valley. Y Takie Valley has been a part of our story since its inception, which was the first vintage was 2004. But we didn't buy the new until 2017. And then we'd hold down and we have a hospitality venue there at a Valley one bar. Which is very cool. It's really a significant part of our story. All of our white wines aside from the Real McCoy Orange Fido Grey come from the Y Takie Valley. The grant and his wife moved over there. So the Y Takie Valley is such a tiny story in New Zealand wine, but it's such an important one. And there are many people or many producers that are in the Y Takie. So it's a privilege, but it's almost a duty, a responsibility to tell that story because it's tiny and it's fragile. It's nature. But in the hands of people like ourselves who really believe in it, it's a bit of an insanity to make wine into place where it's impossible to make any money, right? But sometimes you do some things for love. So the Y Takie is certainly the love child. It's a very special spot and the wine bar is very cool and kouraul. Yeah, if he's been. Yes, I have. Yeah, cool. No, stay there and yeah, no, it's a very unique spot. And obviously there's some great wine coming out of there. And so is it the Shadanae is every year you're doing the Y Takie Shadanae? Yes, we have top-grupted a Hector of our Unvenured or just a better part of a Hector of our Unvenured to Shadanae. So just this year we're starting to get a consistent volume from our Unlock and then we have two other growers that we can and often do on purchase fruit from as well. Okay. And then you see, you've done an Otago Shadanae once or twice as part of the fundraising. Yeah. So we've got Mossin, which we have the Dwindling funnel few cases. He's our first piece of Central Authority of Shardinay. And then we have made another one called Pickle from 2021 T-Floids. So we haven't released her yet. So that one was probably cool because it was a second opportunity to use the knowledge we've made for it. We gained from making the first one. But people love it. Shardinay is, to my mind, stronger than ever. Not in terms of the interest and quality of the ones we're making in New Zealand, the Ultaic, the consumer demand. Shardinay is certainly a hot commodity at the moment. So making a couple of them is pretty cool. Yeah, and I'm certainly one who's pleased to hear there's more Shardinay coming out of Central Tago. And Reasling, you do a few different styles. We have our wide-secondary, in the beginning, Valinay made a dry Reasling from Alexandra. But the opportunity to have that fruit went away when it chased on our ships. So we started making white-teki Reasling in 2013. And then with our own vineyard, we have a hectare of Reasling. So probably I would say from 2021 onwards, 2020 onwards, the wine has kind of, is more recognizable because it comes from around a state and we understand that block. So it's an off-dry wine. But a lot of people think it's dry because the acidity is so searing and beautiful and delicious that it doesn't feel like a sweet wine by any means. And then occasionally when we find the tritus, which does happen in the white-teki, we make a botcher says Reasling or a late harvest Reasling. So a sweeter one, on occasion. But now we make that in addition to the valley-white-teki Reasling. Yeah. Don't you agree as well? It's a dry style made. A lot of it's fermented and oak. I don't know. I hope people listen to these things and actually they do me a jaun. Actually, we make a dry peanut grade. I don't think there are many dry peanut grease in New Zealand and ours is burned dry. So it's a really, really special take on the variety. And in its dryness, you really see that beautiful salty limestone white-takiness in the wine. And there's always white pepper and a little bit of numami and so is a really special wine. And you touched on earlier doing some judging and being involved in some other activities. And you've also won a few accolades yourself? Yeah. I enjoyed judging. It's an opportunity to test your palate, taste a lot of wine and work with people. Judging is really, I mean, there's a review aim where people tend to work on their head. But judging is a team's work. And a lot of the qualities that are required to be a good judge, you have to have a decent palate and stamina. But it's really about working collectively to find an answer. I love it as kind of summer camp when you go back to a show that you go to every year. You see the same people. So I enjoy that. And I just really enjoy it when I've had formal and informal opportunities to mentor people. It's kind of a younger than me, but it's not really about age. It's about where they are in their journey and just helping them find the right questions to ask themselves because that's what I believe good mentoring is. Helping people find their answers, not telling them what to do. But sometimes people need a little bit of a work with a head torch and maybe a little bit of a spotlight to shine a little light. The guide their paths is not a bad thing. And the great thing about mentoring is how much you learn yourself in engaging with people who have these amazing ideas and just want a little direction or a sounding board. And then you walk away. You're spustinly helping them. But if you're doing it right, then you've just reprimandous rewards. So I look for opportunities to just help people where I can and make sure that they're comfortable in their pathway because people did that for me. And it's another beautiful part of one. One's really about community. And it's the community that asks them to make it so special. And in a target, but North and Central, we live that recently. If you're living in New Zealand or anywhere in the world and if you're not under a rock, you would be more in the loss of Sam Neal and to have someone like Sam in our wine community who was such an important, humble man, the communities, the one communities lost someone tremendously special. But in a sense, we haven't really lost them because of the perpetuity of what he's created. It will live on. And so yeah, community is such a big part of it, but communities give and take. So you've got to find opportunities to work together for whatever days, whether you're judging wines or creating a charity thing or planting trees or trying to bring people from halfway around the world over to explain to them what we do so that they go back and teach people who I list our wines. It's nobody can do it alone. And that's what I love about working here is that we get together and help each other. And there's strength and working in numbers. And it's more interest. And okay, so you've discovered this wine. And you like it. But there's no secret that there's so many great wines down here. So I want people to discover other wines because if they're discovering other wines, they're discovering why it is they like those wines. And then hopefully one of our wines resonates for them and they come back to ours and they call. I really love that Gifsten Valley and Matra. And just know so really like Valley Gifsten. So maybe there's something about Gifsten that's really interesting to me. Who else makes wine Gifsten? But it's all about discovery. So I often spend half a lot of time recommending other wines to people as well, you know, because I hope that they'll buy value. I just want them to find them what they love. The whole thing is the wine is about finding what new view and those aren't the best wines. I don't really believe in going inbound. I believe in what you want to drink is what's important. But if you give people more information, the other thing in my job is not to tell you you're tasting cherries or that's really got high levels of acidity or that tenants coarser than that one or whatever, to give you little details about what we do so that you can figure out what you're seeing is I'm not going to tell you in the wine because I don't know. But if I say it off, Bendigo is a warmer sub-region because it's west facing. So it gets the afternoon sun, which is hotter and more prolonged. Because of that, the plants adapt and they grow thicker skins. Those thicker skins get more color to the wine and more available talent. So maybe the reason why you see more body in Bendigo is maybe what you're seeing in Bendigo is because of these things. And they'll say, "Oh yeah, I'm just here again. I'm a narrator, right? So to give you a few details, and then you can choose your own adventure in the story. But that's not my job. And it's to help enlighten you to all the beautiful wines that are made in this country, to small country. We make just a drop of wine compared to somewhere like Spain. But there's so much diversity and interest in such a high level of quality. And I think we should all be ambassadors for all of New Zealand wine, not only your own brand. No, that's fantastic. Like one of those books where you choose your own path in the story. It can be laid out and set up for you. Then you can choose where you want to go. And then you're learning why you're going down that path and why that appeals to you and what it is that you're actually experiencing along the way. And you're moving forward. And that's the thing, if it otherwise people are going to jump to spirits and other things, if you're not moving forward and it's not simulating an interesting and meaningful, if the wine is so simulating and interesting and meaningful, it's just we need to remember how to have to engage people. And I think a lot of it, despite probably what it doesn't sound like I've been here because I'm talking more than listening is I think listening is a really important part in terms of telling the story is you have to listen and pay attention to what's going on around you and what people want to hear, what they want to know about wine and what they want to learn about wine, not what we want to tell them. I think that's, I think to get ahead now, we need to be good listeners as well as good storytellers. Well, it sounds like you've had some great input and some great mentorship through your career to date and that you're paying it forward into some of these other baby boutique producers around you, which is fantastic and that helps everyone build that depth and share that experience and knowledge, which is good for us as wine drinkers. So we finish on the question, if you could have any glass of wine with anyone, anywhere, who and what and when and where would that be for you, Jen? I've been asked that question a few times and I've never said the same thing because like I said, everything's dynamic and changing, but I think I would love to have a glass of wine with my big brother, Ken, who passed away when I was 15 and I think he'd be really crowded what I'm doing and I'd like to sit on a beach and wait and share a glass of something cool so let's say, Shorne and then just connect with him. I think he'd like it. Lovely. Do you have a shout-on-a in mind? Is there one that you've introduced? I'd love to share the YTK 2018, Shorne, that's, I don't have a favorite, but that vintage and it was a challenging vintage. It was when the hardest vintage we ever had in Central because it all came a month early and we're still bottling and I had this lovely friend Carl Coombs and working with me and we're still figuring out how to make Shorne pull, stop in our winery and let it learn YTK Shorne. And I, that wine, I'd still have a few bottles and when I pull it out, it's just everything I love about Shorne. It's savory, it's textural, it's got beautiful balance and harmony, it's a little bit of centric, it's not glossy and polished, it's just full of character and I can see, you know, like a nice wintertime in Hawaii with sunset and a little breeze. and cool sitting under a palm tree, maybe watching some whales go by, sitting a little bit of salty white hockey shard now and catching up on the years that we have them in together. I think if I were afforded that opportunity, I'd take it in a heartbeat. That's lovely, Jen. Appreciate you sharing that with us and I'm sure he would love that as well and be very proud of what you've done. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. We do really appreciate you coming on the show. It's really exciting what you've been doing and what you are doing and thank you because it leads to us being able to enjoy some great wine. Appreciate that. Please keep it up and also it's great to hear that the knowledge is being shared around and that all helps to grow and strengthen what we can produce in both Central and New Zealand. Thanks for that and thanks again for your time. It's been lovely having you. My pleasure. Thanks for your interest. I appreciate it. We've been speaking with Jen Parr, the WaiMaker at Valley Wine in the Central Otago here in New Zealand. You can find Valley Wine online at ValleyWineVALLIWine.com. Be sure to have a listen to some of the other New Zealand Wine podcasts. We'll be talking to others in the industry here in New Zealand and also check out podcast.nz for some other great New Zealand topics. You can follow the New Zealand Wine podcast on Instagram and we look forward to your company again very shortly. Mar-ta-wa, bye for now. [Music]