The story of John Hancock is fascinating: He is a born winemaker with a passion for fermentation. Proof of this was that he was making cider in his dormitory at boarding school! After many years experience spent in his home country Australia, but also France and New Zealand, he decided to set up Trinity Hill with a bunch of associates, making some of the finest Syrah wines in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. John told us about his background, his philosophy as a winemaker and also gave us a great insight on the wines of New Zealand, and you will learn that there are many other great wines apart from Pinot Noir or Sauvignon Blanc!               Olivier Bourseau: Trinity Hill is a partnership between Robert and Robyn Wilson, Trevor and Hanne Janes, and yourself so 3 entities based in Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand. The company was set up in 1987. How did it all start? Or what triggered this get together? John Hancock: It was a result of a meeting I had with Robyn and Robert Wilson in 1987 in their restaurant called bleeding heart. They have the Don restaurant too. The previous company that I was working with was Morton Estate and we were doing a Morton Estate luncheon at the bleeding heart, and we just sat there after the lunch, had a couple of bottles of wine between ourselves and that proceeded to the whole thing really! O.B: You have more than 35 years of winemaking experience spanned between New Zealand, Australia, and France. Can you tell us a bit more about your background and which have been the biggest influences in your career so far? John Hancock: I am a South Australian, I was brought up in South-East Australia close to Coonawarra which is one of Australia’s major red wine producing regions, and my family wasn’t involved in wine at all. And then in the 1950’s, wine and especially table wine wasn’t a big part of consumption in Australia. But then I started to making fruit wine at home, just as something to do when I was 12 years old, Mulberry wine and so on and became the thing that got me into the specifics of fermentation and winemaking technology. Then I went away to boarding school in Adelaide, and one of my teachers used to make mead (honey wine) so he had fermentations happening all around the place so it has always quite intrigued me. And by that time, we had actually started to make cider in our dormitory so we had a business going, commercial cider making business going in our dormitory! Then I went to University studied winemaking at Roseworthy in South Australia, graduated in 1973, and worked at a company called Leo Buring in the Barossa Valley probably making the greatest white wines in Australia at that time based on Riesling. The winemaker there was a guy called John Vickery who’s probably the greatest winemaker Australia has ever had. I think he was just brilliant particularly with regards to aromatic whites, Riesling and so on, and he was my biggest influence in my winemaking. Picture below - Trinty Hill's vineyards             O.B: Most of your grapes come from a site called Gimblett Gravels in the warmest part of New Zealand on the northern island. Could you tell us a bit more about this area, and why it has been working so well especially for your Syrah? John Hancock: It is the riverbed that is left behind by Hawke’s Bay’s main river, a river called Ngaruroro which is a Maori name but translates to shimmering water which has to do with whitebait fish that live in the river. So when they moved in the shoal they were shimmering on the top of the river and that’s where the name Ngaruroro comes from. It’s a long convoluted story but basically in the late 1860’s the river changed course and left exposed this very very deep gravels. They are grey coloured stones which were left behind, 100 meters deep, and these are very free draining, with low fertility, ideal in New Zealand growing conditions, because the growing conditions in New Zealand can be too good. Things grow too rampantly, so having low fertility is good, and we have to irrigate so we can irrigate to control the growth on the vine, so by reducing irrigation, we can slow the vine down, we can stop that rampant growth. For instance you can’t really ripen Cabernet Sauvignon anywhere else consistently in New Zealand, but in the Gimblett Gravels you can. It is a small region, it is about 800 hectares in total, it is almost all planted now, but it is relatively new. The first vineyards were only planted in 1982, most of the vineyards have been planted since the mid 1990’s, so vines are still very young and we are experimenting with grape varieties, to see which varieties actually work best in that particular vineyard because we don’t know yet. Picture Below - A bottle of their top wine, Homage Syrah 2006, a blend of 96% Syrah, 4% Viognier. The vines were cropped at the tiny yield of about 20 hl per hectare! A very fine Syrah with a Rhône style. O.B: You have quite a large range of wines, from Syrah, Merlot Cabernet, to Chardonnay, Viognier, and Pinot Gris where you are able to maintain high quality throughout. Is the winemaker more important than the place where the fruit comes from, or the other way round? John Hancock: I think it is important for the winemaker to understand the wine style that he is making. So between Warren Gibson, the other winemaker at Trinity Hill and myself we have now done 67 or 68 harvests, in I think 17 different regions of the world, in 7 different countries. So I have a very good handle on what’s required from me to use particular grape varieties. So I think that’s where the winemaker’s skill comes in but the reality is it is what comes from the vineyard determines how good a quality your wine is going to be. Winemaker is really just a custodian unless it is a bad season, unless the fruit is sub-standard. Then he has to start working on some magic, otherwise he is just there to gently bring the wine along. O.B: You are using the French speaking word Syrah where you could be using Shiraz as it is used in other English speaking countries. Is it because you consider your wine to be closer to a European style of Syrah rather than the riper Australian? John Hancock: We definitely think that our climate allows us to make wine that is more similar to the northern Rhône Valley in France. The reality is Syrah is the correct name for the grape variety, and Shiraz is a bastardised version of it. So it is more about that than it is about trying to pinpoint it as a style of wine from Europe. However we do like to differentiate ourselves from Australia because our styles of Syrah are very different from the vast majority of Australian’s Shirazes which are quite big and quite heavy. Our wines are not like that at all. They are more elegant wines with more finesse. O.B: Away from your wines, what are the other areas in the world which interest you with regards to your personal taste and out of interest in your job? John Hancock: Definitely the wines that inspire me are the wines from France. The classic wines of France particularly Burgundy, I love Burgundy, I have worked there. Also Bordeaux, I love Bordeaux. But I think the wines that float my boat the most are the wines from the Northern Rhône. O.B: Thank you very much John!