In 2015, Jered Tate was looking for somewhere to go, and something to grow, when he saw an orchard for sale on Trade Me.
Auckland born and bred, he was then managing one of his family’s Bridgestone tyre franchises in Westgate, northwest of Auckland.
“It was literally my entire life up until that point,” Jered says. “I was pushing tyres around in the garage from the age of five.”
When his parents decided to retire from the business, he was faced with a fork in the road – take on the baton of ownership, or set his own course.
“I decided to chase some dreams,” he says.
That dream: “growing stuff”. At the time, he had been transforming his Westgate backyard into something of a suburban market garden.
“We had 900m² and I turned everything outside into garden, and I spent all of my weekends growing vegetables.”
So he began looking for an affordable plot of land to grow on a commercial scale, when he came across a four-hectare orchard for sale on the banks of the Clutha River, near the small Central Otago community of Roxburgh.
Jered had met his partner, Jodi Gillam-Taylor, just six months earlier, but she was also looking for a change after spending seven years in an office job in central Auckland. So the couple flew down to take a look.
“It was secluded and beautiful, which is exactly what I was looking for,” Jered says.
Jodi wasn’t quite as enamoured with the seclusion, however, but managed to be convinced to move 1500km south.
“It was a really small town compared to what I was used to, but it showed its beauty. I wanted a change and this was going to be a big change,” she says. “It was very isolating though, especially for the first couple of months when I didn’t have a car.”
The couple arrived in time for their first summer harvest on the orchard, which was planted in a mixture of stone fruit: cherries, apricots, nectarines, plums and peaches. Jered learned the ropes of his new career with support from “fantastic neighbours” who own orchards on both sides, along with seasonal workers.
“It was hectic,” Jered says. “I just hit the ground running. Fortunately it was a good season, the weather was favourable and the price of the fruit was good, if not great.”
Although four hectares might seem like a considerable size to an orchard novice, it was small enough that Jered was able to effectively manage his crop and avoid any serious issues during those first two years. If bad weather was forecast during harvest and he didn’t have enough staff, he would stay up all night picking fruit, and get it done.
All the fruit was sent to external packhouses, where it was prepared for export.
Scaling Up
After a couple of years, however, the couple realised they’d need to increase the scale of their orchard to be financially viable, and bought a 20-hectare orchard across the road, which also had a large roadside shed and fruit stall. They later recommissioned an old 1950s packing shed on the property, which would let them control their supply line from the trees through to the customer, most of whom are retailers throughout New Zealand.
Unlike the small orchard, which Jered could manage with the help of a few workers, the big one required far more organisation to stay ahead of the weather.
“Harvest management would have been the hardest element to understand. The first season on the big orchard was deathly hot, and it was understanding the dynamic between how much those high temperatures are going to impact the requirement for staffing.
“If it’s really hot, the fruit is going to get riper a lot quicker. You might think you need eight people to get the job done based on previous seasons, but you actually need 15 people this year. By the time you figure that out, it’s too late. You’ve lost a bunch of your crop.”
While Jered says losing crops is “fucking distressing”, it’s something every orchardist has to contend with at some point. The difference with Jered and Jodi, however, is that they found a way to put those unsellable crops, with their small imperfections, to good use.
Branch to Booze
Next to growing, Jered’s other passion in life was making booze. He’d been a hobby distiller for years, and began experimenting with making schnapps and brandies from the unsellable fruit. When New Zealand was plunged into COVID-19 lockdowns, opportunity knocked.
As the country went into the first lockdown in March 2020, a number of orchards were left stuck with fruit they were unable to get to market. While the couple had managed to harvest most of their fruit already, Jered began to fear they could be stuck with tonnes of produce the following season if there was a repeat lockdown. So he decided to take his distilling commercial.
“I’d always wanted to have a distillery, and didn’t want to be a 60-year-old guy still chasing my distillery dreams. So I rolled the dice.”
That winter he ordered a commercial 500-litre copper still from China, which he set up in their fruit-stall shed. Up A Tree Distillery was formed.
He started making a range of schnapps, inspired by Czech backpackers who had worked on the orchard and introduced him to slivovitz, a traditional plum brandy. That summer, however, schnapps proved a hard sell for Kiwi drinkers, so he began developing a range of gins, using fermented fruit to make the base spirit and adding local botanicals – like rosehip and thyme – for flavour.
“The beauty of having our own shop means we got to know first-hand what products were most popular with Kiwi consumers.”
They’ve now also got a line of fruit liqueurs, which have proved popular. The distilling business helps balance out challenging seasons, where rain may cut harvest volumes but increase the amount of waste fruit for spirits.
“Every year we get to do something different,” Jodi says. “If we’ve got too many cherries we make cherry liqueur; if we’ve got apricots we can make apricot liqueur.”
As production has expanded, the couple has been able to take waste fruit from orchards throughout Central Otago. They’ve also expanded into making cider, using Cox’s Orange and Granny Smith apples from their orchard, which they sell under their label, Incider.
Due to the cost and time required to break into chain supermarkets and liquor stores, almost all of the liquor is sold via their roadside stall.
It’s now a decade since the couple made the move, and they’ve added two kids, aged two and five, to the orchard. While life’s busy over summer, it’s given them a lifestyle they couldn’t have managed in the city.
“Definitely still loving it,” Jered says. “Yesterday the kids got home from school at 3.30 and that was my day done, and we got to hoon around the house for a few hours. It was perfect. If we still had the tyre shop, 100% we wouldn’t be doing that.”
“It’s really cool seeing the girls light up helping their dad out on the orchard,” Jodi says. “Life would have been easier in Auckland, but definitely less exciting.”