A Brief History of the Glengarry Wineletter
In March 1987, from somewhere to the west of Auckland and to the sound of harps and cherubs playing banjos, the first-ever Glengarry Wineletter rose into the firmament, bearing the moniker ‘No. 1’. It was, in its nascent form, known as Joe’s Underground Wineletter and editorially signed by the man himself.
Within its pages, the avid punter encountered reviews penned by Michael Chappory, a Titirangi hombre with Spanish blood in his veins and, not infrequently, a Rioja in his glass. MC assembled the historic first issue and curated the original Punch Magazine-styled humour. The Wineletter was, from its inception, all about useful information spiced with a generous helping of fun.
The monthly A4 epistle, which over subsequent years went on to periodically change in size and shape, was created to amplify the endeavours of the generation of the Jakicevich family raised in the then horticultural hub of Oratia, who were at the time fearlessly reinventing the way wine retail was conducted on our shores.
Close relationships with European and New World wine producers, wine enthusiast shop staff, instore tastings and the Glengarry Wine Academy - established to further an understanding of wine in all its glorious idiosyncrasies - were a vital part of the mix. It’s important to acknowledge that many of the now commonplace occurrences instigated by the innovative Jakicevich family were not in existence at that time.
Boasting a relationship with the family stretching back to short pants and the classrooms of Oratia Primary, my own introduction arose when I tripped and accidently fell into the cover of No. 23, March 1989. As a 20-something in the 1970s I had painted Jak J’s entire truck in mad imagery, something I also did in later years to many of the interior walls of the original Jakicevich family home in Glengarry Road while living there.
Thus the writing was on the wall, so to speak, and it was only a matter of time before the Brothers Jakicevich roped me into their burgeoning empire to ply my crayons in the more controlled environment of their budding Wineletter. It’s probably worth adding that at the time, the family member now running Glengarry was too short to touch the top of the Jakicevich dining table. So yes, it’s been a while.
Initially working on just the covers, I eventually took over the whole thing from a rigorously enlarged and expanded No. 47 onwards, assembling the issues in pre-computer era fashion, doing the paste-up, as it was then quaintly known, using cardboard, a sharp scalpel blade, hot glue and a roller on Jak’s kitchen table in Glengarry Road. The Punch humour disappeared to be replaced by my own graphic scribblings, while Michael Chappory continued to script the wine reviews prior to typesetting.
Back then, we were reliant on a pre-computerised world, and a number of the processes employed in the progress to press-ready no longer exist. A harbinger, perhaps, of what is to come, entire prepress professions, some involving extensive apprenticeships (take a bow, photoengraving) just disappeared, seemingly overnight. It can be a harsh old world: one could only feel for those crestfallen, long-serving practitioners of a now obsolete specialty.
Post the assembly and prepress, I’d travel in the pre-dawn hours up to Warkworth to oversee the early morning print run on a high-speed web offset machine. Having previously drifted between one-off musical and artistic assignments, I did at the time have other plans for my life, but I can’t quite remember what they were, now.
In the early days, one of the wonderful things about the Jakicevich family was the way they just let me go for it – completely off the leash, you might say. An echo, surely, of their fearless and innovative approach to establishing their vinous empire.
And then there was Michael Larsen, a copywriter of prodigious talent and wit, who for many years contributed his acutely perceptive and grin-inducing words to the Wineletters, in the process inspiring me to pick up the baton when he departed to try and emulate him.
Our Wineletter printers, from 1998 through to the final printed issue at the end of 2022, were the Image Centre, who in 2022 morphed into SCG. With roots also firmly in the West, the print crew were a great fit with Glengarry, and over many years they consistently delivered through the sleet, snow and skin-of-your-teeth deadlines.
Along the way, computers entered the mix and changed the structure of the Wineletter world, how it was fashioned and how it functioned, with the internet and online interaction following hard on their heels. As things sped up and new complexities came into existence, hand painted covers and illustrations with their lengthy turnaround became a thing of the past. Photoshop and Illustrator became the new way of working. Meanwhile, as ever, Glengarry and its Wineletter scoured the world for the new and the interesting.
Ultimately, for the Glengarry Wineletter, 2023 and 2024 were an exclusively online enterprise, ending its run in the form that took with No. 297. As with many aspects of human activity, the days of handmade everything are long behind us; it’s a brave new world – with a degree of the unknown to its potential outcomes (take a bow, AI), but with new opportunities and approaches to be embraced. One thing’s for sure: the Wineletter has never, in its 38-year history, stood still. Once again, it is reinventing itself as a leader of the conversation. Is there still a place for it? We’re about to find out. Stay tuned.
And me? I remember, now, that other plan. I’m back to my first love: making music.
Graeme Gash
