Wine pioneer honoured by Auckland University

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Vine

Distinguished Auckland University alumnus Kim Goldwater is best known for his pioneering vision to establish winegrowing on Waiheke Island and producing Auckland’s first world-class Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wines.

More recently, he and wife Jeanette gifted the historic 14 hectare Goldwater Vineyard to The University of Auckland, helping to establish Auckland’s first Wine Science Centre, giving students, researchers and winemakers the opportunity to work closely together.

Kim Goldwater, a graduate of The University of Auckland’s Engineering School, received one of six Distinguished Alumni Awards from the University at a ceremony on 1st March. At the annual Distinguished Alumni Awards dinner award winners he addressed a 450-strong audience of leading community figures, politicians, business professionals and academics.

In 2011, the Goldwater family transferred the successful Goldie Wines boutique winery to the University in a philanthropic move to partner with the Goldwater Wine Science Centre as a home for the University’s wine science programme at Waiheke.

Less well-known are the early years of Mr Goldwater’s spirit of innovation and discovery, and the journey that led him and Jeanette to buy a beautiful property on Waiheke in 1977 with the purpose of establishing a vineyard there.

Mr Goldwater was born and raised on the North Shore and in a family dominated by architects, (his father and brother), his aptitude for building led him to opt for an engineering degree. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering from The University of Auckland in 1961, specialising in civil structural engineering.

“As a youngster I was always building things and so engineering was a logical option,” he says.

His first job at 13 years old was as a bricklayer’s labourer working on the garden bar at the Esplanade Hotel in Devonport.

“It was the hardest job I’ve ever had. I had to run all day carrying bricks, for 10 hours each day. There must be a million bricks in that garden bar and I carried every single one of them, and mixed all the concrete.”

He attended Takapuna Grammar and went from there to The University of Auckland and the first year of an engineering degree on the city campus. But it was the following years, based out at Ardmore that made the most impression on him.

The University had taken over the abandoned American airbase at Ardmore and it was perfect for the School of Engineering, because it had accommodation and the hangers were converted into labs and lecture theatres for the students, he says.

“It was a stunning place to grow up and it was the first time in our lives we were given responsibility for ourselves,” says Mr Goldwater.

“There were 33 students in the first year and about 90 students there overall doing the three years, so you knew everyone.

“We spent most of our spare time thinking up pranks for our amusement, including abducting Governor General Cobham, who thankfully took it in good part,” he says.

“If you tried it now you would probably be shot which is a sad commentary on today’s state of affairs.”

Compulsory summer work experience led Mr Goldwater to counting nuts and bolts on the Auckland Harbour Bridge project.

“The Union wouldn’t allow students to work on the site, but we had to get work experience for our engineering qualification, so they let us work there as ‘observers’. They gave us the job of counting bolts, because the riggers kept throwing nuts and bolts at fish they could see in the water under the bridge.”

The enterprising engineering students worked out a quick system to do this by counting 100 into a sack, and then weighing the sacks, but the workers got to hear of this, and the union insisted they count the nuts and bolts one at a time.

“Of course we kept weighing the sacks,” he says.

“That was my first introduction to stupidity, but I’ve since discovered the world is full of it – especially in bureaucracy.”

After he graduated, his first job in engineering was with the Auckland City Council structural design department for six months, before he and his wife Jeanette, headed to London where he worked as a specialist consultant in pre-stress concrete, design and construction.

From there they went to Spain and worked for an American consultant, designing the 256 bridges – for Spain’s first motorway from Burgos to Santander on the northern coast. That was followed by a job with a Spanish firm, as senior design engineer, to design and construct a satellite city for Valladolid in the north east.

“It was a great lifestyle in Spain, and we could have happily stayed on, but our work permits had run out, and we didn’t want to apply for residency. We are both fourth generation New Zealanders and at that point we realised we wanted to be New Zealanders, not Spanish, and so we headed home with our three children, all of them born in Europe.”

After a stint with BECAs, he became resident engineer for the Auckland Harbour Board, building the ‘roll on, roll off’ Fergusson Wharf.

“The wharf doesn’t exist anymore, it’s now under the present Fergusson Container Terminal,” he says. About that time he decided it was time for a change in direction.

“I had been in engineering for 10 years and I wanted to do something different. I realised that a large engineering project like the Sydney Harbour Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge are only about once in a hundred years, so my chances of working on a big project were about zero. There are so many interesting things to do in the world, and I didn’t want to sit around doing boring stuff.”

Mr Goldwater built a Townson ’32 yacht so that he and the family could explore the Hauraki Gulf in the weekends and he started up an advertising photography business. Spain had given him a taste of the wine culture of Europe and he was keen to see quality wines in New Zealand.

“In Spain, we had adopted their lifestyle, including the ‘bread in one hand, glass of wine in the other’ way of having meals. When we came back to New Zealand, we found that no-one locally was making any decent wine and asked several wine growers in the Henderson Valley area, if they would plant some of the French wine varieties and make some good wines. Instead they were using American hybrid varieties and making brandy, port, sherry and ‘table wines’.

“After several years of no response from those wine growers, we decided if they were not going to do it, we would do it ourselves.“

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