This year marks the 200th anniversary of the planting of the first vines in New Zealand. Josip Babich was one of the country’s founding winemakers and today his pioneering winery is still family-run, with grandson David at the helm. Rebecca Gibb MW meets him to talk legacies and future prospects
DAVID BABICH LIKES water as much as wine. The head of one of New Zealand’s oldest wineries might be sitting behind his desk poring over the future strategy of his family’s business on weekdays, but his healthy complexion and athletic physique are evidence of his love of kitesurfing and windsurfing on Auckland’s waters. It’s part of his need for speed, which was evident at an early stage. ‘I got a motorbike aged 12 and blasted around the vineyard – it was only two years later I got a helmet for Christmas,’ he says, laughing incredulously. ‘My mum looked at what I was doing and said: “Hmm, you should really have a helmet on.” Today you would have your kid in a suit of armour!’
Growing up on the family’s vineyard in west Auckland in the 1970s in an era before hi-vis vest-wearing health and safety officials, Babich, his two brothers and cousins would use the winery as a playground and drive tractors before they were out of primary school. Three generations of the family lived alongside each other on the eponymous Babich Road, built by his great uncles and grandfather, Josip, who produced his first wine in New Zealand in 1916. They were ‘trying to emulate what they had left in Croatia’, he says.
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