Montana man full of confidence

By Graeme Kennedy

Friday 14th May 2004

Montana Wines' caretaker managing director Brian Johnston rejects industry fears of huge problems caused by the wave of wine to be marketed after this year's record 170,000 tonne grape harvest.

The wine-maker of 20 years sees the huge volume of product as an opportunity rather than a threat.

"There's too much doom and gloom being talked," Johnston said. "It's the old farming mentality of having too much product and worrying about how to get rid of it.

"It was a fantastic vintage and we've got juice in the tank to market our wines, good volumes of premium product to satisfy demand."

Indeed it's juice the company sorely needs, having suffered shortfalls in supply after 2003's smaller than usual vintage.

And the reason for Johnston's confidence?

He thinks New Zealand has barely scratched the surface of its wines' potential.

"The world is only now beginning to find our sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs, with different taste experiences compared to other wines anywhere in the world.

But despite being all "us" and "we," Johnston is not a Kiwi. Irish-born and Scots-educated, he went to Australia in 1969 and worked for Nabisco Foods in Melbourne before joining legendary Adelaide-based wine-giant Southcorp in the early 1980s.

"That was at the start of the huge growth in Australia's wine industry and I thought there would be good opportunities for me," he said.

"I became production director and was acting managing director in 2003, my final year before I took early retirement.

"But that lasted only six months before Allied Domecq asked me to become its global operations director, so I went travelling around the world."

The company asked Johnston to run Montana and put a successor plan in place after managing director Peter Hubscher retired early this year.

New Zealand's biggest wine producer, Montana exports 50% of its production, mainly to the UK, Europe and the US.

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