“Covid is nothing. It looks like a nuclear bomb’s gone off. It’s just wiped out.”

That’s Hawke’s Bay chef Greg Miller, reflecting on the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. Miller owns Valley d’Vine Restaurant on Linden Estate Winery in the Esk Valley, and lives next door to the cellar.

Linden Estate is one of the wineries worst-hit by Gabrielle. Now, says Miller, “we don’t know anything that’s going on. We haven’t seen any of our MPs down here talking to us.

“I just keep going because when I stopped, that’s when it hit me. It was huge.”

Hawke’s Bay produces 7.8 per cent of the country’s wine while the Gisborne area, also affected by the cyclone, accounts for 3.8 per cent according to NZ Wine’s 2022 annual report.

NZ Winegrowers chief executive Philip Gregan says the devastating storm “occurred on the cusp of the busiest time of year for the industry”.

“We have a large number of vineyards in both regions that have not been as significantly impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle and these winegrowers are beginning to harvest their crop, with many producers still feeling positive and looking forward to a high-quality vintage,” Gregan said in a statement yesterday.

The Marlborough region, which produces 80.6 per cent of the country’s wine, has been largely unaffected.

But where the storm did hit, it hit hard.

Silt damage

Petane Wines’ Philip Barber spent the week recovering around 12,000 bottles from silt built up around his cellar, which he says will set Petane back over a million dollars in wholesale trade.

Petane Wines is also in the Esk Valley and Barber works with Linden Estate, Sarosa, and 3 Fates Wines, all in Eskdale.

Barber says he got into the business to be involved with the winemaking process from planting to packaging, though that might have to change now.

“I didn’t have any insurance because I started so small and I didn’t realise how big I’d gotten,” he says. “And then next thing you know, I’ve got this massive flood coming through and my stock was at the brewery.”

The company’s “little bit of insurance” won’t cover the cost of the devastation, says Barber, and the trauma from the floods stays with him every night as “some form of PTSD”.

Like Miller, Barber and his family found themselves trapped by the cyclone. “I had to get on the roof at 4.30 in the morning with my wife and our two kids. And we watched this incredible crazy river racing past our property. It tore down all our sheds. All our tractors floated away.”

Petane founder Phil Barber. Photo / Supplied

He says his beloved Kombi van, which used to sell wines at the local market on Sundays, floated 800 meters from his property.

“I found it in a ditch down by the church. I’ve recovered that with a crane a few days ago. Just strangers helping me out in the process of digging all the silt out of the Kombi.

“It’s a classic. It was perfect.”

While everyone he knows is safe, says Barber, his brother from NZ Brewery “was so close to being wiped out that they couldn’t get on the roof”.

Barber bought his Eskdale property in 2007. Now, he says, “the vineyard is totally destroyed, completely wrecked”.

“We’ve lost all the grapes so at least $100,000 straight away is gone.”

He spent his Friday completing the recovery, water blasting and chemically treating bottles in accordance with MPI standards. He says the recovery is “all free of charge” thanks to the kindness of his community.

“It’s the last day of cleanup. I’ve got some beers in the fridge,” he says.

Now he is expecting an excise bill on the wine he is yet to sell as part of the recovery. “I might get whacked with a massive bill … Even during Covid, excise customs increased.”

He says excise costs are determined by the consumers price index and track up with inflation.

The last excise increase was last June. According to NZ Wine, the tax on wine now adds up to $2.49 per bottle, charged to the winemaker before retail mark-ups.

“It’s a substantial hit,” says Barber. “Whenever you think you’re making money, you get hit with a huge bill. That’s the reality of it all.”

He says his plan now is to reduce production at Petane. “The vineyard is destroyed … I don’t think I’ll ever grow grapes again.

“Our plan was to get case numbers to 7000, 12-packs, then exporting in a couple of years.”

Now, he says, the business will be “much smaller”.

Linden Estate in Esk Valley. Photo / Supplied

Higher prices

Barber says prices at Petane range from a $28 bottle of pinot gris to $68 for their top-of-the-range Sfumato Chardonnay. He says the starting price is likely to rise to $35 a bottle.

“It is a numbers game. If you want to do large volumes, you need a low price.”

In future, Barber says Petane Wines will follow a different model, as he plans to use the funds from his recovered bottles to buy grapes and slowly return to production.

“They won’t be the grapes I grew, which is why I did this.

“I bought the land, planted the vines, looked after them. All the leaf plucking, making the wine, packaged and sold.

“I’m still in shock when I was looking at this all happening. It felt like I was removed from the situation.”

NZ Wine’s Gregan says recovery funding announced by the Government “is a good start”.

This week, Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced a $300 million cyclone relief fund, $50m of which will be for “immediate support to businesses and the primary sector affected by the weather events”.

However, the Herald reported that some Hawke’s Bay growers feel there may not be ongoing support.

“If central government loses interest in us, we will all go under, it’s as simple as that,” said local grower Malcolm Davie.

Davie said it was “impossible” to determine the cost of the floods, but estimated it would be somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 per hectare. “You don’t recover from that,” he said.

“The necessity is for central government to help a critical industry in a critical province and do so immediately and with full commitment.”

He said the orchard, formerly a vineyard, would take about three to four years to recover, and longer to establish good production.

Devastation at Petane Wines in Esk Valley. Photo / Supplied

The cost of recovery

Miller saw Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact on Linden Estate unfold as it happened, as one of the first people on the ground to broadcast the event on Facebook.

“It was a huge night, not sleeping the first night, watching it all happen. And in the morning, I see caravan houses floating. It’s just crazy.”

Miller says rumours of lootings and the sound of gunshots rang out over the region this week. “They’ve got power now, so all that will stop,” he says.

His week has been big for the Eskdale community. He managed to set up a barbecue and gave away essential supplies at a community hub in Eskdale.

Hawke’s Bay winegrower Tony Bish has been in the industry since the 1980s.

“It’s a war zone here. It’s just unbelievable,” he says.

“It’s a huge job. It’s gonna take years to get this region fixed again.”

Devastation at Petane vineyard in Esk Valley. Photo / Supplied

Bish says two of his growers have been severely affected. “One has lost probably half his vineyards. The other one has had flood water right through his vineyard and lost his brand new house.”

He says the team is taking things “one step at a time, one foot in front of the other”.

“There’s a PTSD sort of thing going on.”

Bish says some people in Eskdale are still unaccounted for. “One of my growers lost a good friend. His ute went into a river where, where a bridge had been ... swept away that he couldn’t see because of the floodwater and they’ve not found him or his vehicle.

“There’s definitely people unaccounted for, there’s no question about that. We all expect the number is going to rise.

“They’re talking years to fix that road now. I think there’s six bridges gone and massive slopes. So it’s catastrophic. And there’s value of course. There’s so much stuff buried under mud.”

Bish says many hectares of land and tonnes of grapes have been destroyed. “The whole of the valley is completely gone.”

He says that while some parts of the region are unaffected by cyclone damage, “they’ve had way too much rain, which at this time of year is the last thing we want because we’re quite close to harvest.”

However, “a good part of the Hawke’s Bay industry will be okay,” Bish says.

Most vineyards are not insured, he says, so recovery costs will probably come out of growers’ pockets.

 “I don’t know anyone that insures vineyards. So I think the damage to the industry and the grape industry will be in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions.

“The export industry’s going to take a hit,” says Bish. But “with grapes we’ll be down, but not out.”

While Hawke’s Bay grape production will fall, says Bish, “we make some of the greatest wines in the country and in the world so we’ll be here forever”.

“There’ll be some areas that will not get replanted. You could imagine how those people now feel when they’ve been completely destroyed. There’ll be a certain amount of growers exiting from horticulture, I would suspect.”

To the rest of Aotearoa, he says: “Just support Hawke’s Bay products, whether they’re wine or food products because what we need is cash flow.

“We need our businesses to keep running, so we just want everyone to get behind supporting Hawke’s Bay producers.”

He says the Red Cross is taking donations for the region, as is the Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers Charitable Trust.

This report was produced under the Public Interest Journalism initiative, funded by NZ on Air