Surviving tough times

 Unfortunately though, that first vintage of 2008 coinciding with the global financial crises, put paid to the prospect of profitability.  For a few years at least. 

Acland’s story is one of youthful enthusiasm, not dimmed by an unrelenting market and some very hard times.

Having studied Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln, she then went on to make the worst mistake of her life, she jokingly says.

“I got a job for about eight months and it was dreadful. I very quickly established that I was probably the world’s worst employee – I am not very good working for people.”

So she went back to Lincoln and did her Masters in Farm Management Consultancy. In 2004 she went to Marlborough to undertake a vintage and created her own Sugar Loaf label. (Named after the Sugar Loaf Islands off the coast of Taranaki where she grew up).  A few years travelling overseas ended in 07 when she came back to Marlborough looking for some sort of project, where she would be the employer, not the employee.

Discovering a former winery/cider facility on TradeMe, she took the bulls by the horn and purchased it, with the support of the bank.

“In hindsight I can’t believe they let me buy it. I was 26 years old, and while my parents helped with the bank paper work, the bank essentially lent me several million dollars. That just wouldn’t happen these days.”

But this was 2007 – the wine industry was bullish, the oversupply was yet to happen and the global financial crises was unheard of.

Acland quickly went about securing fruit – at prices of $2600 a tonne, gained three small wine companies who were looking for contract winemaking facilities, and prepared to make and then sell the resulting wine. 

“I was very naive at the time. I thought making the wine was the hard bit and it would just sell itself. Then suddenly there was an absolute flood of wine on the market. It is horrendous looking back at it. We had some seriously hard times.”

She had to re think her entire business plan, which after careful analysis showed the only profitable part of Sugar Loaf Winery, was the contracting winemaking.

“I quickly identified that even though there are some fantastic contract winemaking facilities in Marlborough, there are not many places you can take your 40 or 50 tonnes of grapes to,” Acland says. 

While she had three small companies already on board, she began looking for others. That decision proved to be the lifeline she and Sugar Loaf Winery needed. In 2008 they processed 200 tonnes, in 2014, they processed 1000.

“We still have those three original clients and have added the others and we have grown the business with them. But we have no further plans to grow any further, because we think that would mean we lose our point of difference.”

A lot has happened to Acland in the seven years since she bought the Rapaura based winery. In 2010 she moved out of Marlborough to marry David, a high country farmer from Mt Somers in Canterbury, she had the first of her three babies and took over the running of the winery from afar. With a small team of assistant winemaker, and winery manager holding the fort back in Marlborough, Acland regularly travels from Christchurch to Blenheim to keep her finger on the pulse. 

“The contract wine making facility is something I can run from down there and I have amazing staff and clients to work with.”

Through all the tumultuous and quite frankly, extremely tough years, Acland has quietly worked away at her own label. Although with three children under the age of four it hasn’t been easy marketing it.

“My original plan was to make all my own wine and sell it at a super premium – you know that lovely dream we all have. On paper when you are selling your wine at $7 a litre, it all looks great, but in reality it wasn’t that easy. And not being able to be in the market has meant we haven’t expanded our own label as much as I had intended.”

Despite that she is exporting to Australia, the UK, Ireland and now Canada and sales are steadily growing. 

She also has no regrets, even when thinking back to those tough years of 08 and 09, when there were months that she couldn’t pay herself a cent.

They were hard years, but I often think now, how lucky I was to get this opportunity.”

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