Something’s brewing
Former lawyer Emma McCashin talks to Craig Sisterson about her new life reviving iconic names and creating acclaimed new ones in craft brewing
Just before World War II, a factory opened on a then lonely stretch of road outside of Nelson. Buildings were erected and machinery installed – all designed to harness part of the region’s famous apple crops into the production of a tasty alcoholic beverage, cider. Forty years later, the Rochdale Cider Factory, including its ‘newer’ main building that has stood since 1951 to this day, was purchased by former All Black Terry McCashin; a farmer and hotelier who would go on to change the face of New Zealand brewing.
While continuing to produce cider, McCashin and his family also became famous for putting the ‘craft’ back in New Zealand beer – they enticed the head brewer from Carlsberg to move his family to Nelson to help run the brewery, and stripped beer production back to (extremely tasty) basics – four simple but high quality natural ingredients: malt, yeast, hops, and water. In the 30 years since, the ‘Mac’s’ name became synonymous with quality brewing, and led the way in the pleasing resurgence of craft beers in New Zealand. But then early last year, the factory fell silent; a decade after Lion bought the acclaimed brand, the brewing giant went back on earlier promises and moved production to Auckland. The site where the regional produce (apples and hops) had been transformed into palate-pleasing brews for decades lay vacant.
And that’s where the next generation of the McCashin family comes in. Just like Terry McCashin rescued New Zealand beer from the shackles of sugar-added ales all those years ago, the younger McCashins are now hoping to revitalise cider brewing, including bringing back the original Rochdale Cider brand first made onsite back in the late 1930s.
“What do you do with an empty brewery?” asks Emma McCashin, who had worked for several years as a commercial and property lawyer in Christchurch and Auckland before entering the business world. “My husband and I sort of thought, well, it’s too good an opportunity to give up, we might as well shift to Nelson and start up the brewery again.”
And so the family business became the family business, once more. Emma’s husband Dean is Terry’s son, and the younger McCashins have now taken up the brewing mantle, only this time with apples, rather than hops, as the primary focus. Not the sole focus, however, for along with the resurrected Rochdale Cider (available in traditional or Ginger Lime variants) and the Frute real fruit cider range, the factory is also producing Palaeo mineral water, and the international award-winning 26000 Vodka – both produced with artesian water drawn from a 350-metre deep onsite bore (that accesses an aquifer dating back 26,000 years). For Emma McCashin, just like her father-in-law, it’s all about crafting high quality products from pure natural ingredients.
“It’s exciting starting a business from scratch,” she says. “Seeing it go, and creating the new brands. We’ve been doing a lot of tastings, out there in Christchurch, Nelson, Blenheim… it’s going really well. It’s one of those things where you’ve got to get people to try it, but once they do, they’re really sold on it.”
And although McCashin says she really enjoyed her years as a lawyer, she loves her new life in the brewing business. So, what’s the best thing about cider making? “Drinking it, obviously,” she says with a laugh. “And even though we’re not doing beer, yet, I’ve even developed an appreciation for craft beer, which is quite interesting.”
When, as intended, beer brewing also makes an onsite return, McCashin says the family will once again open up the historic factory for tours. “We’re waiting until we’re actually brewing beer again, because [until then] there’s not really a lot to see.” Crushing and crafting apples into cider apparently isn’t quite as interesting, visually, as “the beer side of things”, although the end product is of course well worth the less-than-spectacular production process. Rochdale Cider is such a fantastic brand, and the timing is perfect with the resurgence of interest in cider, McCashin told the Nelson Mail when the move to reopen the factory was announced last August. “It’s the biggest selling drink in the UK right now, and we love the historic aspects of the product in Nelson.”
In the months between that announcement and the first McCashins’ products beginning to hit the shelves just before the Christmas break, a lot of hard work went into reopening the iconic factory. Her former life as a lawyer came in handy several times, says McCashin, as she found herself taking a lead role when it came to dealing with various property and commercial matters, and briefing the business’s lawyers on issues like resource consents and leases. “I can do some of the basic leg work and just, you know, get the lawyers to actually sign off on the more important [matters],” she says.
More than 70 years after local apples were first crushed and made into Rochdale Cider at a site on a lonely stretch of road outside of Nelson, thanks in part to one former lawyer, the historic factory is humming once more.
Discerning palates around the country are very glad indeed.
NZLawyer, issue 134, 16 April 2010