Judy Finn: Building Neudorf Wines on community and collaboration

“It’s one of the things we naturally do as people and as a business,” says Judy Finn from the Moutere Valley, nearly 50 years after she and her husband Tim launched their “big new adventure” in Nelson.

Judy, who has been named a 2025 New Zealand Winegrowers Fellow for services to wine marketing, has embraced community in myriad ways over the past 47 years, as a longstanding member of Nelson Winegrowers and the Wine Institute marketing committee, a founding member of the Family of Twelve, three terms on the organising committee of New Zealand’s Pinot Noir celebration, the instigator of the annual Neudorf concert and the Moutere Artisans, and a go-to person for anyone looking for marketing advice. “I think collaborative marketing is part of New Zealand’s wine culture,” she says. “And it is such a great strength.”

Throughout it all, Neudorf has taken an authentic and honest approach, for which Judy humbly credits Tim. “He has not one ounce of bullshit in him. Tim has always run the company that way – what you see is what you get and what you say is what you do.”

Judy was 18 years old when she walked out of a statistics exam at Massey University, and into a journalism job at the Manawatu Standard. A few years later, while back in hometown New Plymouth, she met a young researcher working as a dairy advisor. In the early 1970s she and Tim moved to Hamilton, where he was working on his master’s degree in animal behavioural science at the Ruakura Research Station. But the nearby Te Kauwhata Viticultural Research Station offered intriguing wine tastings and soil conversations, and when he finished his paper on the impact of stress on let-down in dairy cows (“bloody useless for winemaking”, Judy says), he convinced her they should look for vineyard land.

They took the path less travelled to the sunny, north-facing, clay loam slopes of Moutere, buying a former commune in 1976. “It had been on the market for a while, but we couldn’t afford the whole 50 acres, so we bought 25 acres and sold the rest to a local farmer to grow gooseberries,” Judy says. “We started from there.” They used an old stable and milled a few big macrocarpas to create a winery, foraged seedlings from around the Suter Gallery for their landscaping, and started grafting vines. “You couldn’t even get small tractors,” Judy says. “Everybody looks at our original plantings and wonders why they are so far apart, but we had to use an old Massey Ferguson.” It was a far cry from “the kids these days with their GPS plantings all perfect – Tim standing at one end of the row yelling at me ‘move to the right! Left! Left! Stop! Good’.”

They needed money to fuel the adventure (and the Massey Ferguson) so worked in Wellington during the week, with Judy at Radio New Zealand. That was “really good fun”, but after nearly two years splitting life between the islands, they moved to Moutere, continuing with day jobs, while planting in the weekends and evenings. Then one day Sam Hunt was reciting poetry at the winery, and “made some sort of romantic gesture about following your dreams”, Judy says. “Tim handed in his resignation the next morning.”

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Everyone was desperate for knowledge back then, and the Finns remain grateful for the help of Hermann Seifried, who’d planted vines in Nelson in 1973. They would go to events with Martinborough, Nelson and Marlborough winemakers, meeting in the Abel Tasman, or for tastings at Lincoln. “It was a convivial business,” Judy says. “I hope it stays that way.”

The collegiality continued as they built a name for Neudorf, including in the winery collective Family of Twelve, which began in 2005 and ran for nearly 20 years, with Judy serving a term as chair. “I would go into a tasting in New York and pour four wineries’ wines… People couldn’t understand why I would do that, but I said, ‘it’s much easier to praise someone else’s wine’.” There was a sense of joy in presenting someone else’s wine, “and being proud of it”, she says.

Conviviality also drives the Neudorf concert, bringing big names to this rural idyll each summer. That “fell in place”, when they were asked to host the Flight of the Conchords 20 years ago. Since then, they have hosted the likes of Marlon Williams, Lorde, and Fat Freddy’s Drop, with Tim and Judy’s daughter Rosie running the event and the whole team working the bar, including winemaker Todd Stevens. “Everyone gets involved” says Judy. She also started the Moutere Artisans – a group of 20 odd producers championing the village. “Potters, wine, cider, mushrooms, cheese, peonies, garlic, prosciutto – you name it, what a place and easy to celebrate.”

Meanwhile, Neudorf’s wines have earned a reputation for excellence. Writing about the winery in The Real Review, Bob Campbell MW, a long-time fan of Neudorf (and himself a NZW Fellow) recalled judging wine in Sydney when another judge announced loudly, “this isn’t an Australian or New Zealand wine, it’s a Puligny-Montrachet”. The 1991 Neudorf Moutere Chardonnay “did indeed taste as though it had sprung from the chalky hillside soils of Burgundy”, Bob wrote. “Chardonnay is Neudorf’s star turn.” Years later Bob would go on to award his first ever 100 point score to the Neudorf Moutere Chardonnay 2014.

Wine marketers work hand in hand with “brilliant winemakers and viticulturists”, Judy says on becoming a Fellow. “I don’t believe one can sustainably exist without the others.” Nearly 50 years after they launched their “big new adventure”, Neudorf wines have achieved global acclaim, the Suter seedlings are mature trees, and the communities Judy and Tim helped grow are far greater than the sum of their parts.