Obituary - Joseph A. Corban

21 February, 2007

Joe Corban was once aptly described as the Grandfather of New Zealand viticulture by Master of Wine Steve Smith and he was recognized as such by many in the New Zealand wine industry.

Joe was awarded an MBE for services to the viticultural industry, a Fellowship of the Wine Institute of New Zealand and the Paul Harris Fellowship for services to Rotary, but it was his 53-year marriage to Patricia and their four children and 11 grandchildren who meant the most to him.

Joe was the fourth grandson of A A Corban, founder of the patriarchal Corban family dynasty and a founder of the New Zealand wine industry. Joe was, in some ways, the antithesis of the grandfather he recalls so well. A A Corban held court in the extended Corban homestead into which Joe was born and raised – a quiet man from Lebanon who spoke more in Arabic than in English. By contrast, Joe craved the company of others; more comfortable in the land and language of his birth.

The extended family that Joe grew up in was one that he likened to a pride of lions.

“The men fought nature and time to defend and provide; the females sustained the safety and well-being initially of their own cubs but always rising to the defence of the whole Corban family when required.”

The Corban family commune was a self-sufficient community with extensive gardens, orchards of apples, pears, plums, peaches and figs; plantations of wattle trees used for vineyard posts, shed framing and firewood. There was a distillery where grape pressings and wine lees were used to obtain fortifying spirit for ports and sherries. Cows milk was converted to soft cheeses and butter; meat preserved by rendering in its own fat and stored in earthenware crocks throughout winter; eggs were preserved by coating them with Vaseline or Ovaline. Nothing was wasted.

Joe went to Mount Albert Grammar School in 1947, which he left at 17 years of age; getting polio, which saw him laid up in bed for three months.

At 18, he moved back to the homestead at Henderson to provide company for his grandmother, Najibie; herself pining the loss of the late A A Corban. During his tenure with Sitty (Arabic for grandmother), Joe remembered with mirth that she would come into the bathroom with a vast roll of toweling, unravelling it and drying him down after his shower – “While I stood there in all my manly glory”.

Instead of going to university, Joe was set to work in the vineyards alongside his favourite uncle, Najib, from whom he learnt about grapes, vines and the family business.

When the family massively expanded its vineyard plantings outside the Henderson Valley in the 1950s and 60s, money became tight which led, in time, to the introduction into the family business of merchant shareholders and, eventually and insidiously, to the slow and painful corporate takeover by Rothmans Industries in the mid 1970s. When he retired from Corbans Wines in 1984, Joe applied his modest retirement benefits to purchase the company’s vine nursery at Riverlea. He worked hard and built the nursery into Corbans Viticulture, now one of the largest vine nurseries producing over two million grafted grapevines annually for the burgeoning New Zealand wine industry.

Today all of his adult children – Mark, Robyn, Bruce and Michelle – are involved in the business.

Joe inherited pragmatism and a pioneering spirit from his grandfather. He will be remembered in the wine and viticultural industries for his personal integrity and generosity to all who needed help.

His funeral was held on Thursday 14 December 2006 at West City Christian Centre in Glendene, Auckland. It was held there because the church was large, as was the group of around 1,000 friends, families and wine industry colleagues who gathered to honour and farewell Joe.