It’s November 2019, and over a curry dinner in downtown Nelson, Dr. Susan Wheeler can hardly contain her energy. Most of that energy is directed towards the imminent realization of a professional labor of love. After five years of hard graft, Wheeler is preparing for her first harvest as the general manager of research and innovation at New Zealand’s newest hop producer: Hop Revolution. Wheeler, with a doctorate in viticulture research, finds herself at the cresting wave of a new era for New Zealand’s hop industry.
The introduction of Nelson Sauvin by the NZ Hops cooperative, and that hop’s emergence in the 2010s as a blockbuster variety, turned an industry traditionally focused on bitterness upside-down. Where farms were once closing, demand for the country’s aromatic, tropical, and vinous hop varieties now far outstrips supply, and new producers are emerging to challenge NZ Hops’ virtual monopoly. Wheeler’s efforts with Hop Revolution are based at a 116-hectare farm in the nearby Tapawera Valley, where they grow Nelson Sauvin, but also Riwaka, Motueka, and Pacific Sunrise. It’s a calculated gamble, but chatting with Wheeler over dinner, and the next day following her around the farm, it feels as if her boundless optimism is well up for it.
Fast-forward 12 months, and over a crackly WhatsApp call it sounds as if the gamble has paid off. In the teeth of a global pandemic, Hop Revolution’s inaugural harvest went “spectacularly well,” she says, delivering high-quality hops and exceeding yield targets. New Zealand closed its borders four days after the harvest finished, meaning no brewer visits, no sensory panels, and no lot selections. Getting her hops to their processing partner in Idaho was a touch-and-go logistical nightmare. “We were really worried we wouldn’t get hops out of New Zealand,” she says. “But the gods smiled on us. Everything reached the States on time.”
Not able to travel with them, Wheeler chewed her fingernails waiting for the reaction of the first brewers—from breweries the likes of Hop Butcher for the World, Half Acre Beer Company, The Veil Brewing Co., and Equilibrium Brewery—to use her crop. “It’s almost like that proud mum moment. Are they going to turn around and say, ‘Gosh, these are rubbish?’”
The reaction must have been good: 2021’s harvest is already 80% contracted, they’re exporting hops to Europe a year ahead of schedule, and two new farms are due to come online in the next couple of years. Wheeler’s overriding response to all this is validation: “I’m just so fortunate. Some of my brewers who I would have met five or six years ago and stuck by me, listened to my story, and supported me when it was all just a dream, they’re making beers now with my hops, and that is just so much fun to watch.”
Words,Eoghan Walsh