Sam Neill was a fine actor and “a very nice man,” says Nick Ryan, but many of his “proudest achievements sprang from the soil.”
One night in a Pigalle bar, the kind of place where the andouillette and the wine are aromatically interchangeable, I noticed the waitress had been eyeing one member of our antipodean foursome strangely from the time we’d sat down. After the politest possible rejection of two suggested wines that broke most food safety laws and several of the criminal kind, then the acceptance of a third because it was kinder to submit than cause offence, the waitress realized we wouldn’t be staying long and decided to take her shot.
“Has anyone ever said you look just like the actor Sam Neill, only more handsome?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” replied Sam.
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“I’ve heard he’s a very nice man.”
Sam Neill was many things. Actor. Vigneron. Ukelele Player. Pig Wrangler. A private person who became a viral sensation in the most viral of times. But above all else, he was a very nice man.
Since Sam’s passing in July, the tributes have sprung from all corners of the globe, the diversity of their origin only emphasizing the singularity of their tone. Decency. Kindness. Good humor. It speaks volume for his acting talent and range that his big break in Hollywood came playing the Antichrist.
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Sam made more than 80 feature films, and some very fine television, too. The entire world knew him for Jurassic Park, and he was greatly amused when I confessed to him I’d never seen it. He was even more amused when I proclaimed the best film he’d ever done was a small, low-budget Australian film called Death in Brunswick. He was once seriously in the frame to become James Bond and I can’t help wondering how we might think about 007 if his drinking repertoire of shaken Martinis, Dom Pérignon, Bollinger, and fine claret found space for Central Otago Pinot Noir.
For all Sam’s achievements on film, I’m one of many who suspect his proudest sprang from the soil. It was inevitable Sam Neill would end up in wine. He just got a little sidetracked getting there.
Spirit of the Beehive
Neill’s great grandfather arrived in Otago the same year gold was discovered, 1861, and intuitively knew the best way to make money from a goldrush was not with pick and shovel but with the liquids soothing those wielding them.
The family firm of wine and spirits merchants, Neill & Co. became a major player in New Zealand, and by the time Neill’s father returned to the business after a distinguished military career, Neill & Co was, among other things, the producer of New Zealand’s biggest selling brandy. “It was called Beehive Brandy and Dad always said the key to its popularity was pronunciation,” Sam once told me. “It was a lot easier for Kiwis to ask for Beehive than Courvoisier.”
Acting ambitions may have taken the young Sam away from Neill & Co. but they also lured him deeper into the thrall of the product. While most of us can point to a significant person who helped turned passing interest into passionate pursuit, only Sam Neill can say he had Captain Nemo show him the way.
The great actor James Mason had become a mentor, helping guide Sam’s flourishing career after he’d moved to London in the late-1980s. That guidance went beyond the actor’s craft and delivered something even more valuable. One evening at dinner in Switzerland, in a place known to be a favorite of Charlie Chaplin, Sam was struck dumb by the wine poured into his glass. “That’s Burgundy, my boy!” said Mason. “And don’t you forget it.” Sam never did.
Increasing success brought better bottles, and in 1993 serious success brought serious escalation. In the same year he made Jurassic Park, Sam purchased 2ha (5 acres) in Central Otago’s Gibbston Valley and planted Pinot Noir. Film director Roger Donaldson did the same with an adjoining block and the plan was to have a label together they would call, prosaically, Two Paddocks.
Donaldson went in another direction, but Sam plowed on. Over time, that first vineyard would double in size and be joined by three more. Redbank and Last Chance at either end of the Alexandra Basin, and The Fusilier, named in honor of Sam’s military man father and situated on the famed Felton Road in Bannockburn.
The fact Two Paddocks is really four is just one way most people only get half the story.
More than a side-hustle
Two Paddocks was never a celebrity side-hustle. By his own admission, Sam wasn’t Brad Pitt. By general acclaim, not Kylie Minogue either. Nor is he Jon Bon Jovi, Jay Z, Sting, or even Cliff Richard.
Sam was a true vigneron. More than that, he was a Central Otago vigneron. That distinction is important. There is something unique about the winemaking community in Central Otago.
Maybe it’s the cinematic scope of the landscape. Or the palpable energy of the place, the way the light fizzles, the rivers roar, and the sense that when you stand still for a moment you can almost feel vibrations through your feet. It’s certainly something to do with the blessed isolation of the place. Whatever it is, they are all, in their differing degrees, the most beautiful kind of mad.
Sam, in his own deft and demure way, was as mad as any of them. When you saw him pouring his wines at public events or passing shared bottles at the crammed winemaker dinners that followed them, I think you came closest to seeing the real Sam Neill.
You saw the young boy christened Nigel, whose childhood holidays in Central Otago charted the topography of his imagination and anchored him. While his career took him all over the world, his homing senses brought him back to this distant corner.
While he’s going to be missed by many people in many places, his loss will be felt deeply among the people in the place that was always so special to him. For the past couple of years, we’d been working on a plan to taste deep into the Two Paddocks archive for this publication but, for all sorts of reasons, diaries never aligned just right. “One day I’d like to see something written about Two Paddocks that didn’t once mention a single film,” was the brief. In my planning, I started calling it, “No dinosaurs, just dirt.”
While many have written of the celluloid legacy Sam leaves, it’s the tale told through those four vineyards that will resonate most deeply in years to come. And when vintages decades hence are dissected and discussed without reference to Velociraptors or Wilderpeople, Satan’s spawn or spies, no one will be happier than Sam.
