The Exchanges

Q Right. And the goal eventually, in your minds at least, was one day we are going to have our own, we're going to make our own wine, or were you not quite there yet?

A Yeah, I mean, that was the eventual goal, but It was fast-tracked by 2008, and so when the financial crisis happened, you know, the global, global economic financial crisis, we had a couple things going on. There was a bumper harvest in New Zealand, so a very, very large harvest that created this huge surplus of wine. All those fantastic restaurants, you know, that had those The clientele with the, the large expense accounts, they all dried up. Yep. And, you know, restaurants for the most part make a pretty good revenue off of their alcohol and their wine, so they stopped paying their bills, and, uh, Robert and I got to the point where we just said, wow, this is really, really hard. Trying to figure out how we're going to survive this, and came to the conclusion that, Um, if we were going to keep on doing this, we should do it for ourselves, and at this time, it was like now or never, and this was a time that we should make the jump and start a wine company.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, that was the eventual goal, but It was fast-tracked”

Q So how old were you when, when you moved to New Zealand?

A I was six and a half. I was nearly seven. When I went to New Zealand, I went by myself. My mom had a business in Los Angeles. Um, she had a lot of things that she wanted to tie up and sort of organize, and I think that her cancer, um, advanced much quicker than they had anticipated. Um, And so she put me on a plane down to New Zealand as a six and a half year old. And I remember, uh, at the time being, you know, on the plane by myself and, you know, back in the eighties, there was still a smoking section. And I was really intrigued as to, I remember being intrigued as to like why there were these curtains, um, that separated one part of the plane to the other. Uh, but it was, of course, it was all quite exciting sort of being by yourself. And I remember going down and, and my, my grandparents and my uncle retrieving me from the airport. And I just remember immediately it looking so different than Los Angeles.

AI assessment note: “I was six and a half. I was nearly seven.”

Q Do you remember as a kid, um, Feeling, I mean, I asked Robin a version of this question, but, um, I mean, obviously New Zealand is, is primarily, you know, people that are primarily of white European origin or Maori origin. Um, did you, did you have a sense of your own identity? Did you, did you feel different?

A Yes. I think, um, I definitely stood out and you touched on it. The indigenous people to New Zealand are Maori. We also today have a lot of people from the Pacific islands. Um, but in the eighties, um, especially in the South Island, uh, there were not a lot of Maori people and they were definitely not a lot of Pacific Island people. And, you know, the slave trade didn't go through New Zealand. So you don't have people of African descent. So I was very dark compared to what people were used to seeing. You know, I was obviously very different than when you look at, I guess, physically what Maori people look like. I'm six foot one now. So I was, you know, I was this very tall, lanky, darker to them child. And as Robin noted before, you know, kids made sure that That I knew that I was different, and even adults too. You know, it was, um, something I was very, very aware of, and other people, uh, definitely highlighted that.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I think, um, I definitely stood out”

Q And what about you, Andrea? I mean, I mean, clearly both of you were passionate about wine, but, uh, you were still in college, and also still, like, really focused on athletics, right?

A Yeah, my dream was to be an Olympian, to be a gold medalist, and I had a, a pretty bad injury, uh, In which I came to the realization that like, you know, this was like, I wasn't going to get to that dream. And it was quite a depressing time, you know, because for, I would say, since the time I was 14, seriously pursuing, you know, this Olympic dream. And then I think in conjunction with that, meeting with Robin and Um, in California, and really building our bond as sisters, and as young women, when we would hang out, and we would get together, sometimes we would just drive, with no, like, destination in mind, and we would just be talking, and we would kind of, what we call now, just drive and dream. And we would just talk about, like, hey, yo, what would it be like, like, if we started our own wine company? You know, what would it look like? What would it be like? And then.

AI assessment note: “my dream was to be an Olympian, to be a gold medalist, and I”

Q And this was, these were just kind of like, like, just conversations that friends or sisters or siblings have, like, hey, wouldn't it be great if we start a business together? It was like that.

A Yeah, it was, you know, that's so crazy. How could we possibly do that? We don't know how to make wine. We have no money. That's crazy. But. But how crazy is it though? And then I think in conjunction with, with having this injury and realizing that, you know, I wasn't gonna go to the Olympics, that I was a junior, that pretty soon I wasn't gonna have to get a job in the real world. Um, that, for me at least, it kind of was like, what do I want, started to go through these questions, like what do I want to do in my life? What do I love? Could me and Robin do something together? Maybe we could start a winery.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it was, you know, that's so crazy. How could we possibly do that?”

Q You were going back and forth to New Zealand?

A Yeah, so we were very particular in knowing exactly, from a growing perspective, what we wanted, and then from a winemaking perspective, what we wanted the final product to be. In Marlborough, uh, we have the northern valley, called the Wairau Valley, and then we have the southern valley, called the Awatiri Valley, and the Wairau is the older pot Of Marlborough, and it's much warmer, and, uh, the, the Awoteri Valley in the south is a lot cooler, and it's more exposed, and as a result, uh, in the wines, um, in the northern part of the region, you get wines that are, that have this more tropical flavor profile, a lot of, um, passion fruit, a lot of gooseberry, and then also peaches, and, and also red grapefruit, Versus the Awatere Valley is, ah, jalapeno, tomato stalk. And Robin and I, um, felt, felt very passionately about producing a wine that had a very tropical spectrum of flavor, and that's what we produced.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so we were very particular in knowing exactly, from a growing perspective”