From Guangzhou to Golden Bay

Sarah and Ben Bonoma have lived in many of the world’s biggest cities, but now they’re loving life in provincial New Zealand. As told to Joanna Davis.

Sarah and Ben Bonoma, the couple behind Golden Bay’s renowned Dancing Sands gin distillery, have swapped lives in cities with millions of inhabitants for a life in provincial New Zealand, and they finally feel at home.

Ben was in Singapore, and Sarah in Guangzhou before they made the decision to move to Aotearoa New Zealand. They bought a still in Ta¯ kaka, Golden Bay in 2016 and developed their distinctive gins, with flavours such as chocolate, wasabi and the newest, sauvignon blanc – taking out more than 50 international awards along the way.

The couple now live ‘‘over the hill’’ in Richmond, near Nelson, a move to try to gain some work/life balance with daughters Mia, 6, and Zoe, 3, and a new puppy, as the business goes from strength to strength.

SARAH BONOMA

Golden Bay is a very special place, a beautiful place to live, and very out of the way. We moved there when Mia was nine months old. But our second daughter came along, and the business was growing rapidly.

We were doing a lot of travel for the business, within the country and overseas trips to the United States to line up our importer there. So, that’s what prompted the move to Richmond, to get more of a life balance that we were missing.

We launched in the US in July this year, with a listing in Pennsylvania that goes out to 54 stores. And we have a deal with another distributor in 24 states.

I can commute quite easily back to the Bay.

I do it most weeks. The drive is challenging, very windy. People say, ‘‘we’re just going over the hill’’ but it’s winding roads and steep drops. You have to pay attention.

We looked all over Richmond and Nelson for a house. I’ve always had a pragmatic hat on, but we walked into this one and immediately we both knew it was the right house for us. It has a fantastic living area, all open plan, a big garden.

It was move-in ready. We’ve always bought houses to do up. Between us we’d done up four properties that all involved pretty much overhauling – new kitchens, new bathrooms – complete redecoration. But with two young kids and a growing business, we didn’t have the time.

We moved to New Zealand in 2013.

I was working in Guangzhou in China, Ben was in Singapore. Prior to that I was in London, and he was in New York.

We could not be happier here. We’d never been to New Zealand before we moved here. We chose it because we’d heard great things from friends and family who’d visited.

We landed with just five boxes of stuff and enough money in the bank to last us six months in case everything went pearshaped. But we haven’t looked back.

This is the first time for both of us that we’ve lived somewhere and weren’t looking to be somewhere else. This is our home.

The area has everything that we need to live and yet within an hour’s drive we have the (Nelson) Lakes, we have Golden Bay, we have Marlborough. We have mountain biking straight out the front door, we can go hiking. We’re very outdoors-orientated.

We’re constantly telling the kids, who don’t understand because they’re too young, how lucky they are to be brought up in such a wonderful place.

Ben is out mountain biking several times a week. I’m out running five, six times a week. We’ve done bits of the Queen Charlotte track with the children, walked the Nelson Lakes.

Just over a year ago Ben and I switched roles, and I took over the managing director role.

We’ve always both worked in the business. In the first 3 1⁄2 years Ben took the lead, I took point on the kids and supported. And then we switched.

We both get them ready in the morning. He’ll go and drop them off, I start work.

They come home at 3.30pm from school and kindergarten. I put work down for 20 minutes, and we all reconvene in the kitchen and catch up on the day, and then I can disappear back into my office to finish off.

The kids are fascinated by the distillery. They want to know how old they need to be before they can start working with the team. I’ve told them when they get to 10 they can start making boxes.

I don’t miss the corporate world.

I’ve never worked harder than running my own business. I would also say I’ve learned more in the last five and a half years than I did in my whole corporate career together just in terms of there being no one else to do things for you.

You know, especially in distilling, there’s a lot of regulations: food safety and hazardous substances and customs regulations.

There’s no guidebook on how to do it. We’ve just had to learn everything.