Remembering Sam: Our most famous actor on home, Hollywood friends, wine, and ageing

Is that who I think it is?

Famous folk navigate life differently. They glide, rather than forge grimly ahead. Today is the Tuesday after the Easter holidays but the schools are off and Sam Neill’s local cafe is shut so we venture into a bustling Cromwell township. After two hours strolling down dewy rows of his Two Paddocks vineyard at Bannockburn, the man Meryl Streep said was the greatest kisser she ever worked with is hankering for coffee.

Looking every bit the country gent, in low-slung chinos and a red-checked lined bush coat, the world-famous actor saunters through the crowds which appear to part, like minnows for sharks. The young people, both the gumboot-shod, Aertex-wearing local kids and the skinny foreign backpackers, don’t pay him much heed. But the older ones, the Boomers doing cappuccino, do, whispering behind their muffins, ‘Is that who I think it is?’

Neill doesn’t appear to notice. He appears relaxed – he’s certainly been lavish with his time and hospitality – but one can’t help wondering: Where does the man start and the actor stop? Or rather, the actor start and the man stop? What is a performance for the nosy journalist or the coffee-sipping public’s benefit and what is real?

The 76-year-old greets the female staff inside the sun-soaked cafe as old friends, “Nice to see you again”. He flashes that smile, the international leading man smile with enlivened eyes and teeth of nearly 100 feature films that give you glimpses of the fedora-wearing world-renowned palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, for years the highest-grossing film of all time, and orders a flat white “extra hot” and cheesy mousetrap, on the promise that he couldn’t possibly eat it all and declares that it would be shared evenly.

Securing a table outside, in the shadow of a large, green Kiwi Experience bus that Neill struggles to see the touristic attraction of, he settles down and is ready to field more questions. Before the interview, he determined that it wouldn’t cover his health, after two years fighting stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma – a form of blood cancer. “In remission for two years, fit and well thank you,” was all he would say. Fair enough.

While dividing the mousetrap carefully, admiringly noting its dollops of pineapple, he says, “You asked if any of my, what did you say, movie friends? . . . were fans of my wine?” He puts down the knife and fork and fishes for his cellphone.

While he hunts around, he says off-handedly, “Liam . . . ”, meaning Neeson (Schindler’s List, Rob Roy, Taken) is a supporter . . . “but he’s not drinking at the moment.” We joke that he can’t now that he’s a big action hero, but I later read Neeson gave up the booze after his wife, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident in Montreal in 2009.

Scrolling his phone, Neill says he got a text message the other day from fellow Northern Irish-born screen star James Nesbitt (Cold Feet, Murphy’s Law).

Jimmy Nesbitt was at Belfast’s top wine merchants and saw they were “selling your stuff . . . it makes me so happy”, he said, signing off, ‘Love, Jimmy’.

Crowded House founding member Neil Finn made a panicked call a few weeks back. He wanted to gift some Two Paddocks pinot to his management in LA but couldn’t get his hands on any. An emergency order was shipped out.

Peaky Blinders buddy and Oscar winner Cillian Murphy came to stay for a few nights the other day too (a “lovely man”), as did fellow Kiwi moviemaker Taika Waititi. The names are dropped without a clang.

“Taika has a very dark sense of humour,” Neill says chuckling, recalling how his Hunt for the Wilderpeople director mate rocked up to the southern vineyard with a three-layered tray of sickly shots and shooters. “The most disgusting things, the most horrible idea and the complete reverse of what we do. That’s why he did it. I thought it was funny but . . . bloody Taika,” he shakes his head. “Now I don’t know what to do with these shots. I’m certainly not going to drink them. Maybe my nephew can take them back to Otago University. It’s the sort of stuff they drink in Dunedin.”

The lie of the land

On the drive back to the vineyard, Neill spins a yarn of a grizzled old gold prospector, a bachelor much like himself these days, who proffered two pieces of advice when hearing that young upstarts were planning to plant vines around about that way.

One (he does the voice): If you can grow an apricot, you can grow a grape.

And two: Rabbit shit! That’s where you build your house, it’ll be sunny and dry.

We come to the Fusilier vineyard at the end of the famed Bannockburn valley, dry, north-facing terraces of deep alluvial fans with varying depths of silt, sand and gravel layering all derived from “mountainous raw schist parent material”.

It is named in honour of Neill’s father, Major Dermot Neill, a soldier in the Royal Irish Fusilier Regiment for 20 years – whose war cry motto ‘Faugh A Ballagh’ (Clear the Way) adorns the signpost at the farm gate.

Unusually for post-war New Zealand, Neill grew up around wine. A part of the family business Neill & Co, operating out of Dunedin, once a commercial powerhouse, was importing wine and spirits. There was often wine on the table at home too. His father enjoyed a glass with his meal, although the quality was “pretty rough”.

“They were nasty in those early days,” Neill says.

His father would visit Central Otago in the 1950s and wonder why nobody was growing grapes. The landscape and soil greatly reminded him of Italy during the war. Yet, it took three more decades before anyone caught on.

As a child, Neill’s family holidays were spent exploring the South Island wilderness. Gravel roads, no traffic, millions of sheep. Young Nigel – as he was born, giving himself the “cowboy name” of Sam as a schoolboy, which stuck – enjoyed many fond family expeditions spent camping, tramping, skiing and fishing.

“It was a very empty place then”, unlike today with the highways choked by campervans, rental cars, milk tankers and utes.

The Mills were old family friends. When they started growing wine at Rippon Vineyard in Wānaka – planting many different varieties to see what took hold; pinot noir as it happened – Neill senior was tickled. “It was a celebration for Dad,” the younger Neill says, later admitting that his father would have been proud to see his son as owner of four organic vineyards. And he believes the early pioneers of Central Otago wine growing were brave people. “Nobody knew what would work here and what wouldn’t.”

He tells of popping in to see winegrowing friends in the early 1990s. They sat around a table and uncorked a 1991 pinot. What happened next changed his life.

“I could not have been more surprised,” Neill recalls. “It was so . . . Burgundian. It was a really exciting day, to drink that.”

After the runaway success of Jurassic Park, Neill built a house in Queenstown and used it as his base during downtime, fly–fishing and skiing.

But planting his own vineyard never crossed his mind until one day when he bumped into legendary local wine entrepreneur Greg Hay. He asked Neill if he wanted to buy in as a partner for some Gibbston Valley plots. It took a matter of seconds for Neill to agree.

“That’s where it all started but I never meant it to be a project on this scale, which is tiny on the world stage, but for me, it’s huge.”

Bannockburn is “the bee’s knees” when it comes to Central Otago wines, says Neill, who has three other vineyards – two over the hill in the Alexandra area, and another in the original site that he went halves in with star film director Roger Donaldson initially, in the Gibbston Valley.

“I love being in wine country, anywhere in the world,” Neill says.

Aside from his wine venture, he’s also well-known for his menagerie of farm animals, including sheep, ducks, rams, chickens, and pigs, especially naming his swine after famous friends.

His latest pig is called Annette Bening after his Apples Never Fall co-star. “She’s a very pretty little pig,” he says. “I was a little careful and asked [Bening] if it was a good thing or not because I didn’t want to offend her. She was flattered by it.”

The farm rooster is called Michael Fassbender after the German-Irish star actor of Band of Brothers, Inglorious Basterds, 300, and X-Men. “I don’t know if he’d take offence at the title, ‘Michael Fassbender, the cock’. But I haven’t heard. We shall see,” he says, smirking.

The Boss

Head viticulturist Mike Wing’s little dog runs about and the Two Paddocks cat stalks the vines. Gazing across the spectacular vista, the early sun kissing the late vines, dappling the autumnal leaves, yellows and reds . . . Neill says quietly, “There are not many things you can do to the country to improve it, but vines are definitely one.”

“I’ve always felt part of Otago. My family got here in 1861 I think and so I’ve always felt so grounded here. I’m part of Otago – and Otago is part of me. As soon as I land in Queenstown, I turn right. I know where I need to be. And the closer I get to home, the more relaxed I become. It’s lovely getting home to this.”

Neill, who auditioned to play post-Roger Moore James Bond and says it was the best decision of his career not to pursue 007 further, loves the extremities of Otago. From a rugged coastline to picturesque rolling hills, near-deserts, and snow-topped mountains, he finds it tough to beat.

“When I got the opportunity to live where I wanted, I realised that I wanted to live here. I mean, where else would you want to live?”

And he really could live anywhere. And many places are closer to exotic film locations across Europe, California, Queensland.

The pull home is especially strong near the end of a filming project. But as idyllic and peaceful as the place is, “as soon as I land, there is stuff to do.

“I’m undecided if I’m the laziest man in the world or unnecessarily motivated. I love being a blob in front of the TV but I hardly ever have the time to do it.”

Two Paddocks manager Jacqui Murphy shows up and tidies up the boss’ collar, fusses over his hair. She says the Fusilier 2021 vintage has just been released to the market. Off the cuff, she describes it thus: “Dark, ripe, exuberant . . . an expression of not only the Fusilier vineyard but the Bannockburn subregion . . . typically a little redder fruited than other Bannockburn pinot, with a brightness and longevity.”

“And a long finish . . . ” Neill chirps in. He thinks the past three years have yielded his best vintages.

Walking between the vines, listening to the largely French contingent pick the fruit and natter in a quickfire colloquial native tongue, he hopes this year might be another classic.

“I don’t know enough about it, but this looks to be a good vintage to me,” he says.

Better with age

Plucking tight bunches of little dark grapes and tasting them, spitting out the skins, Neill gives an analogy about vines and acting.

Young vines are like children, he muses: Charming yet unpredictable. Teenagers can be brilliant but moody and ill-tempered. By the time they hit maturity in their 20s, they are grown-up and consistent. And by old age, they might not reach the same quantity as earlier in their life, but the quality will be amazing. “And that’s what I think I’m doing as an actor”.

On the wooden deck of the old woolshed, which now partly acts as the vineyard workers’ smoko room, Neill produces the Fusilier 2021 ‘Proprietor’s Reserve’.

“I’m very fond of old agriculture buildings,” Neill says as he finds some glasses, conjuring his character in the movie Rams where he plays a cantankerous, crusty Western Australia sheep farmer.

The sun is high by late morning. It’s warm for autumn and there is no breeze. A crop plane drones low overhead. Bird scare guns up the valley blast away the peace intermittently. Swirling his glass, Neill studies his latest creation. “It’s all about the nose isn’t it,” he says. “That’s the thing about a wine, a good wine, just stick your schnoz in it . . . it invites you to go further. It’s sort of welcoming . . . yet it’s such a subjective business, tasting wine.”

He invites you to identify its notes, spicy wild herbs and red fruits. He sips again. “More than anything, it tastes of home,” he says, looking satisfied. “I’d like to think that if someone gave me that blind, I would know which one it was.”

Neill has been extremely relaxed today. He occasionally checks the time as he has to pick up his brother Michael, one of the world’s leading Shakespearean scholars, from Queenstown Airport. Sitting there in the sun, sampling his own wine, which boasts: ‘Proprietor, Sam Neill’, he looks a man content.

“Music and wine are two things I got from Dad,” he says, swirling, swirling the red, red wine, looking to the cherry trees up the hill. Growing up a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he suggests one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century is the random/shuffle function on electronic listening devices.

“It bounces you around all these parts of your life and there’s nothing like music to put you in a place and time.” He smiles, not the international leading man smile but one of a Central Otago landowner comfortable in his surroundings.

“I’ll be hitchhiking in Westport in 1972 and then London in 1982 listening to The Specials. You never know where it’ll take you . . . I love that . . . And wine is like that. Wine is culture and living well, friendship and conversation. The finer things in life.”