A champion of New Zealand winegrowing

This story was written by Sophie Preece, for the June 2022 edition of Winepress.

WHEN DOMINIC Pecchenino arrived at Matador Estate in 1993, Marlborough winegrowers were plagued by phylloxera and sceptical of plant science. Three decades on, the viticulturist has been recognised for his tireless work - using innovation, research and collegiality, to improve the way we grow wine.

Dominic “shows the true spirit of what has made our industry great”, said Marlborough Winegrowers board chair Beth Forrest in presenting the Wine Marlborough Lifetime Achievement Award to Dominic at Matador Estate last month. 

Speaking at the Winter Pruning Field Day, she said Dominic arrived in Marlborough from California “with science and research as his yardstick and this has never wavered. He turned up with a university education in viticulture, a master’s no less (at the time this was a rare claim indeed) and he helped transform our understanding of the science of growing good grapes.” He questioned the status quo, showed leadership and gave his time generously, Beth added, “as he continues to do today”.

Dominic says the award is a “great honour” that came out of the blue. “I am very humbled and very pleased to have been recognised. You work a long time in an industry and to be recognised for doing something that makes a difference is probably the best honour you can get.”

And make a difference he has, spending 16 years on the New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) board, three as chair, and around 15 years as chair of NZW’s research committee. “He was also an instigator for the annual Grape Days, as he strongly believed that research being undertaken around the country needed to be shared with growers throughout the country,” says Wine Marlborough general manager Marcus Pickens, speaking of the “fresh eyes and international experience” Dominic brought to the region.

Dominic has been involved in producing books on botrytis and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as a manual on frost protection, and his passion for industry betterment saw him sit on the Bragato Research Institute board for five years, from concept to launch, and as acting chair in its first year. He was the first to trial mechanical thinning in New Zealand, envisioning a time when phylloxera would not limit growth, and continued that work through to mechanical shaking for botrytis control. He led the pack in transforming vine prunings and winery waste into compost and mulch for the vineyard, to kill inoculum overwintering in the soils while adding organic matter to Matador Estate. 

“I have always had an inquisitive mind,” says Dominic. “I have always wanted to figure out why things happen; to know how I can change it or fix it. And that’s where the research comes into play. Sometimes you can’t do anything about it, but a lot of times I have found the majority of our problems are pretty simple. You just have to look at it from a different point of view.”

Having research peers around the world ever ready to share their expertise and insights has been a “privilege”, he says, also emphasising the work from Dr Simon Hooker and Janette McKibbin in driving Grape Days. Meanwhile, the tireless support of the team he works with at Matador Estate has been a boon, Dominic adds. “Then you get a guy like (Matador owner) John Webber, who’s up for anything and wants to help the industry, and you are good to go.” 

It’s a far cry from growing up in a butcher’s shop in California, with dreams of life as a pro-footballer. After a year playing at junior college, “I figured I would never make a living at that”, Dominic says, choosing a geology major instead. He was paying his way through school with a job in a deli when he met the owner’s friend Julio Gallo, of the winemaking Gallo family. They talked about his prospects, and Dominic explained that he liked landscapes, glaciers, earthquakes and wine, but not the rocks of geology, nor the prospect of hunting for oil. 

Julio convinced him to explore viticulture instead, and Dominic went on to do a degree in plant science at California State University, Fresno, where most of his classmates came from vineyards. “I was a little bit of an enigma. I had no idea what a grapevine was really about, but I went to school and learned and worked hard.” He went on to join one of the largest grape growers in the world, on vineyards as big as 10,000 acres, working his way up from fertility and irrigation management to leading special projects, via a lot of “seven-day weeks and 12-hour days”. Four years after receiving his degree he went back for a master’s degree in viticulture, putting an inquisitive mind and serious work ethic to good use. 

Dominic’s growing expertise in phylloxera mitigation and replanting caught the eye of John Webber in 1993, as the aphid ravaged the roots of Marlborough vines. Dominic flew to Auckland for a meeting that year, and was promptly taken to Lake Taupō, where he caught three trout before evening, “and we went from there”, recalls John. “We have never had a terse word in 30 years.” Dominic is “diligent, knowledgeable and gets along with everyone”. When he arrived in Marlborough he took care not to be known as the “know-it-all Yank”, adds John. “He knew to keep his head down and work hard. And that’s what he’s done. He’s always worked extremely hard.” When Dominic puts his mind to something he does it, “and he does it very well”. 

After meeting with John, as well as Mark Nobilo and Ivan Selak, Dominic set off for Marlborough to look at the 80-hectare Matador Estate, at that stage the largest privately owned contiguous vineyard in the country, though a fraction of the size of blocks he’d worked on. 

Phylloxera was biting but markets were growing at pace, “and they needed fruit”, says Dominic. “And whatever they could get was better than nothing.” So he devised a redevelopment programme that maximised production while replanting on resistant rootstock, using better viticulture to mitigate the aphid’s impact. 

Having read Dominic’s handwritten report, John immediately asked him to either visit four times a year as consultant or move to Marlborough to work for Matador. Dominic and his wife Marianne decided their young family was ripe for “a bit of an adventure”, at a time when the California industry was a bit flat, and they set off for Blenheim in February 1994. 

“At the time there were a lot of people growing grapes in Marlborough that did not know how to grow grapes,” says Dominic. “They had come from maybe being sheep farmers or farming arable crops, and when you farm a permanent crop it’s a whole different story.” Grapes needed good acid and Ph, and phylloxera was depleting those attributes, creating flabby wines, he says. “Our job was to keep the vines up and running and keep them as healthy as possible”. 

There were far fewer tools in New Zealand than Dominic had available in California, including liquid fertiliser, so they did things “the hard way”, he says. “We had to do the best we could with what we had.” 

People were a bit “wary” of the Yank with new-fangled ideas, and he’d be told that just because something happened in California didn’t mean it would happen in Marlborough as well. “But science is science,” Dominic says. “No matter what hemisphere you are in.” 

He determined to bide his time and watch for a year, recognising “a big misunderstanding” of plant science in Marlborough’s early years. “But that’s been taken care of”, he says 30 years on, noting New Zealand now has a global reputation for wine research. “We are a really young industry, but when you look at where we are, and the work we have on the world stage, we are right up there.” 

Lifetime Achievement 

The Wine Marlborough Lifetime Achievement Awards was to be presented at the 2021 Marlborough Wine Show Celebration Long Lunch, but the event was cancelled due to Covid-19. Previous winners of the Wine Marlborough Lifetime Achievement Award include Gerry Gregg, Ross Lawson, Phil Rose, Ivan Sutherland, Jane Hunter, Dr Rengasamy Balasubramaniam, Dr John Forrest, and Judy and Neal Ibbotson.