Former German international airline pilot Joerg Henkenhaf’s career has certainly taken off in a new direction. Now in charge of an award-winning distillery and a tasting room, he tells PHILIP CHANDLER how he got into the booze business in Queenstown, and why he calls his label ‘Broken Heart’
It’s 10 years since Queenstowner Joerg Henkenhaf launched his first Broken Heart gin, which morphed last year into his Gin Garden tasting room in Arthurs Point.
But his gin origins really started during his childhood in Germany.
There he grew up amongst family orchards and vineyards — his grandparents made wine and spirits like cherry schnapps and plum gin.
Queenstown only came on the horizon because of his career as an international pilot.
In 1999, while flying for cargo airline Cargolux, he discovered New Zealand while on a layoff in Auckland.
‘‘I fell in love with NZ and, touring around the North Island, people said, ‘oh, you should go to the South Island, it’s much more interesting’.’’
He then took a trip with his girlfriend of the time, and when entering Queenstown’s Gibbston valley saw a sign, ‘vineyards for sale’.
‘‘I’d been interested all my life in owning a vineyard, which is a stupid idea.’’
Undeterred, he bought a vineyard amongst Peregrine’s Wentworth blocks in 2001 — at the time, he was splitting his year between NZ and Germany.
He found, to his surprise, local vineyards would just compost their grape skins.
‘‘I said, ‘why don’t you distill these grapes?’ and they said, ‘what are you talking about?’’’
Henkenhaf set up Gibbston Spirits, and proceeded to make grappa from grape skins using a Cromwell distillery.
At the time, however, Kiwis preferred cheap booze and knew little about grappa, he says.
‘‘That’s how I came to think, ‘what do Kiwis drink?’ and it’s gin, it’s vodka.’’
When his oldest daughter was ready to go to school, he says because Europe was getting out of hand he plumped for settling in Queenstown in 2010.
By then he’d met another German expat, Berndt Schnabel, who had a distillery at his Kelvin Heights home.
‘‘He made a really good gin but his bottle really sucked.’’
Henkenhaf says it took him three years to convince Schnabel to make a gin together.
‘‘Then finally we agreed to do this, and then he got diagnosed with cancer and died within two weeks.’’
This was in March, 2012, then the following month, on his birthday, he decided ‘‘I’ve spent so much time and energy on this project, I want to continue that’’.
Driving through Lake Hayes and mourning his friend, ‘‘all of a sudden I just went, ‘broken heart, broken heart, actually that’s a good name’.’’
Fortunately, he found no one else had that domain name, and by September that year he’d produced his first Broken Heart gin.
Meantime, he was now flying for Korean Airlines, which offered him a commuting contract — he flew two weeks on, two weeks off, and didn’t retire till July, 2019.
‘‘It was probably a good time because half a year later I would have lost my job anyway [due to Covid].’’
Altogether he’d flown for 27 years, 22 years on 747s, 17 years as a captain.
Before retiring he’d set up a distillery at his Arrow Junction home, and also got into vodka and rum.
Since retiring, he says business has increased 250% a year.
Still, he says the last three years because of Covid have been his most stressful, especially after opening Gin Garden last year just before the second lockdown.
He also now has the responsibility of employing eight staff at his distillery and 14 at his tasting room.
Currently, he’s producing 15,000 bottles a year using pure spring water from Paradise, near Glenorchy, and locally-found botanicals — ‘‘I’m still looking for something bigger as we don’t have any more space at [Arrow Junction]’’.
Now 55, he says he’s lost 10kg and would like to lose more, ‘‘but I tell you honestly I don’t have time’’.
However, he’s also dreaming of opening a ‘‘very small’’ gin bar in Queenstown’s CBD.
He has his two kids, 17 and 15, working a day or two a week at Gin Garden.
‘‘It’s good for them because I told them one day it’s going to be theirs, and they quite like it.’’
